Republican ‘establishment’ sinks cash into ads pushing back at Tea Party

On a recent Saturday, foot soldiers in the Republican Party’s civil war fanned out across a neighborhood of winding streets and manicured lawns to beat back the Tea Party.

They did not meet much resistance. Over the course of two hours, dozens of residents said they planned to vote in the May 20 primary election for Idaho Representative Mike Simpson, a veteran lawmaker with a reputation for pragmatism. None said they would back his Tea Party challenger Bryan Smith.

As he heads for a likely victory on Tuesday, Simpson has plenty of help. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and the National Rifle Association have joined with groups representing hospitals, dentists and home sellers to try to return him to Congress for an eighth term.

The push is part of a wider drive by so-called establishment Republicans to back mainstream candidates and prevent Tea Party figures like Smith from winning primaries ahead of the November 4 midterm elections.

They fear a repeat of some key races in previous congressional elections when Tea Party insurgents alienated independents and lost to Democrats. Party elders still smart at the loss of a U.S. Senate contest in Missouri in 2012 which was blamed on comments about “legitimate rape” by Republican candidate Todd Akin.

While the Tea Party movement has helped Republicans win significant spending cuts and thwart some of President Barack Obama’s agenda, it also forced a messy shutdown of the U.S. government in 2013 that was unpopular with voters.

In Idaho, organizations that have spent more than $2 million to back veteran Republican Simpson look likely to get a return on their investment, thanks to a deluge of TV advertising and months of door-knocking by workers like Stacey Barrack.

“We talk about his conservative record and everything he’s done in office, and it’s worked,” said Barrack, 28. She entered details of each doorstep encounter into her smart phone.

Working closely together, the pro-Simpson groups have created a shadow campaign of sorts that mirrors, and outspends, the functions of the candidate’s own campaign, sharing data from door-knocking efforts and telephone surveys to determine what messages work best and coordinating their ad buys to ensure they are not duplicating their efforts.

“Everybody does their own product, but we try to make sure everything marries up,” said Scott Reid of the U.S. Chamber, which was the first group to run ads for Simpson and has spent the most money in the race.

One of its TV ads features an endorsement for Simpson from Romney, still a pillar of the Republican establishment despite his 2012 loss to Obama.

Barrack and the other door knockers have been hired by Defending Main Street, a group funded in part by the Laborers Union and the Operating Engineers Union, which unlike most other labor unions give money to both political parties.

As a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, Simpson is the kind of influential, practical-minded Republican who professional associations are keen to cultivate. Lobbyists say his deep knowledge of a wide range of issues, from nuclear energy to forestry, makes him a valuable ally.

The NRA has mailed out flyers for him and the National Association of Realtors has paid for online video ads. The American Hospital Association and the American Dental Association have paid for polls, mail and TV and radio spots.

NORTH CAROLINA, KENTUCKY

Elsewhere, the Republican establishment is also gunning for the Tea Party as it seeks to present electable candidates who can win control of the whole of Congress and make Obama’s life difficult for the rest of his term. Republicans need only a gain of six seats to take the Senate back from the Democrats.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has emerged as one of the biggest spenders so far this year, pumping $12.3 million into the campaigns of 20 business-friendly candidates from Alaska to Florida.

The Chamber and Defending Main Street helped Representative David Joyce fend off a Tea Party-backed challenger in Ohio this month, and also picked up a win in North Carolina, where it worked with the NRA to help state assembly speaker Thom Tillis win a primary battle for a Senate seat.

In Kentucky, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is holding a wide lead over Tea Party challenger Matt Bevin, thanks in part to advertising, polling and other campaign efforts by the NRA, the Chamber and a handful of other business groups.

The Tea Party’s popularity has ebbed in recent years. A Gallup poll released this month found that 41 percent of Republicans considered themselves Tea Party supporters, down from 61 percent in November 2010.

Still, the Tea Party showed it is still a force in the congressional elections when Ben Sasse, a candidate associated with the movement, won a Nebraska Senate seat primary.

And no matter the outcome of this year’s primaries, the movement has pushed the Republican Party as a whole farther to the right.

The fiscally conservative Club for Growth advocacy group which often backs Tea Party hopefuls, sees less of a need this election cycle to spend money to get its low-tax message out.

“Now we’re talking about how much less we’re going to spend as opposed to how much more we’re going to spend,” said spokesman Barney Keller. “That’s a sea change from where we were.”

BAILOUT CRITICISM

Since 1998, Simpson has forged a reputation as a jovial dealmaker who is willing to work with Democrats in order to look after the interests of a sprawling district that encompasses jagged mountain ranges, Mormon farm country, and the microbreweries and bicycle shops of Boise. A close ally of House Speaker John Boehner, Simpson regularly votes for budget deals that are spurned by Tea Party-backed lawmakers.

Simpson’s opponent Smith, an Idaho Falls lawyer, has also received outside backing from small-government groups like Freedomworks and the Club for Growth, which in previous cycles helped elect Tea Party stars like Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

Smith criticizes Simpson’s support for compromises like the 2008 Wall Street bailout and the 2013 bipartisan budget deal.

“If you’re like Congressman Simpson and you vote for a $700 billion bailout, you can naturally expect to get the support of constituents who are the beneficiaries of that,” Smith said.

Simpson is likely to win the primary on Tuesday, according to independent forecasters, and is strongly favored to go on to defeat his Democratic opponent in November.

Groups that back Simpson and other pragmatic Republicans in the primary are careful to portray them as reliable conservatives rather than moderates.

As she makes her rounds in the streets of Boise, Barrack distributes flyers that emphasize Simpson’s A+ rating with the NRA, his 100-percent rating from National Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, and the more than 40 times he has voted to repeal Obamacare.

Simpson said national business groups were supporting him because their members in the state give him high marks.

“The NRA has members all over Idaho. If those members don’t support me, the NRA doesn’t support me. If business in Idaho doesn’t support me, the U.S. Chamber doesn’t support me,” he said in an interview.

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Valerie Jarrett: 'We Have a Commitment' from Boehner on Amnesty This Year

President Barack Obama's top adviser and confidant told a group of global elites on Thursday in Las Vegas, Nevada that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has made a commitment to the White House to try to pass amnesty legislation this year.

After hailing the Senate's amnesty bill that the Congressional Budget Office determined would lower the wages of American workers, Valerie Jarrett, Obama's senior advisor, told attendees at the yearly invitation-only SkyBridge Alternatives Conference that Boehner would help the White House make a push get immigration reform enacted in the next three months. 

“I think we have a window this summer, between now and August, to get something done,” Jarrett said, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “We have a commitment from Speaker Boehner, who’s very frustrated with his caucus."

Addressing attendees at an event described as conference where "investors and elite political donors" along with "hedge fund managers, political and business leaders and celebrities" can "speak freely," Jarrett said that the Senate's bill would pass in the House if Republicans brought it to the floor. 

Jarrett, echoing the sentiments of Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), who has said that Democrats would want a piecemeal approach to immigration reform if they get all of the pieces of the Senate bill, said that there were "a lot of ways to skin a cat" and that there would be "mounting pressure" on amnesty legislation in the coming months. She also reportedly claimed the high-tech industry needed more "educated workers" even though numerous studies have debunked the myth that there is a shortage of American high-tech workers. 

The Senate's bill would double and possibly triple the number of H1-B visas that high-tech lobbying groups like Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us covet even though American colleges and universities graduate more workers in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields than there are job openings. In addition, illegal immigrants put on a path to citizenship and given work visas could qualify for any job, which would reduce the opportunities for Americans on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.

Boehner, who hired Sen. John McCain's top amnesty adviser at the end of the last year, has previously told fundraisers in Las Vegas that he was "hellbent" on getting amnesty legislation done this year and then mocked conservative opponents of amnesty at an event in his Ohio district. Boehner also said that when he and Obama agreed the most on amnesty legislation when they met at the White House in February of this year. Obama also indicated this week that there were only "two to three months" to get amnesty legislation enacted this year. 

House GOP leaders like Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), the GOP Conference Chair, have also floated an August deadline to get legislation on the House floor while business executives have said they thought amnesty legislation would be the"final act" of the lame-duck session. Even if Congress is pressured not to act on immigration legislation this year, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and GOP leaders said on Wednesday that Republicans in the Senate would "absolutely" try to pass amnesty legislation again in the next Congress if Republicans win back the Senate in November. 

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Susan Rice: ‘Dang If I Know’ Whether There Are More Benghazi Secrets To Uncover

Former U.N. ambassador Susan Rice, who served as the Obama administration’s mouthpiece after the Benghazi attacks in September 2012, suggested Wednesday that there’s nothing left to learn about the White House’s response to the attacks — telling a reporter “dang if I know” whether the Republican investigation will unearth more evidence of a coverup.

Rice, now the president’s national security advisor, appeared Wednesday morning at the Women’s Foreign Policy Group in Washington, D.C. Rice had earlier made a joke alluding to the harm the Benghazi scandal caused to her career, prompting PBS journalist Judy Woodruff to ask about Republicans’ new allegations.

“You’re too smart for that!” Rice laughed. “Come on!”

But Woodruff pressed on, asking her what the American people can expect to be revealed as part of the House select committee on Benghazi. “What more is there that the administration has done or said that we’re not aware of?” she asked.

“Dang if I know,” Rice boldly declared. “I mean, honestly. We — the administration has produced, I think, 25,000 pages of documents or 25,000 individual documents. They have supported, participated in, contributed to the investigation of seven, I think, different committees.”

“We have had an accountability review board by a very distinguished group of outsiders,” she continued. “House and Senate committees have pronounced on this repeatedly. So it is hard to imagine what further will come of yet another committee.”

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Ben Sasse Wins Nebraska GOP Senate Primary

Midland University President Ben Sasse won convincingly against former State Treasurer Shane Osborn and businessman Sid Dinsdale in the Republican Senate primary here, likely sending a vaunted young conservative voice to the Senate in 2015.

Sasse, who received the backing of top national conservatives like Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, as well as powerful groups like the Club For Growth, focused his campaign message on repealing Obamacare and restoring the constitutional vision of the Founding Fathers.

The Associated Press called the race for Sasse. With 13 percent of precincts reporting, he was up 43 percent to Dinsdale's 26 percent.

Having won the primary, Sasse is the front-runner to win the general election in November. A recent poll showed Sasse 25 points ahead of Democrat Dave Domina, an attorney from Omaha who won the Democratic nomination.

Osborn began the race in the lead in part due to his high name recognition. Some polls showed his campaign faltered around the time it was revealed that Navy memo he provided to the media clearing his actions in a 2001 incident had actually been authored by a friend and not cleared through official channels.

Dinsdale made a late surge, utilizing his sizable wealth to finance a spurt of campaign ads. But he was harmed by prior donations to Democratic candidates and questions about his sister's role on the board of Planned Parenthood.

National Tea Party groups quickly declared victory as the race was called. 

"Ben Sasse won this race because he never stopped fighting for conservative principles," said Matt Hoskins, executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund, which spent $1.1 million on the race including coordinated contributions. "Ben Sasse will lead the fight to repeal Obamacare and enact reforms that give patients greater control over their own health care decisions. He will fight to stop wasteful taxpayer spending and balance the budget," Hoskins added.

“Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Mike Lee? They’ve got reinforcements coming in January," said Jenny Beth Martin, the president of the Tea Party Patriots.

In his victory speech, however, Sasse sought to downplay the narrative of the race as a victory in a intra-Republican civil war, saying the Nebraskan voters he encountered on the campaign trail didn't care about that. 

Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, praised Sasse in a statement as well. "Ben is a problem solver who will be a conservative voice in our effort to repeal ObamaCare and bring much needed fiscal sanity to the Senate," Moran said.

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Air Force draft consolidation plan would strip top generals of authority over base operations

Senior Air Force leaders have drafted a budget-driven plan that would strip the three- and four-star generals who oversee major commands of their authority to manage their bases.

A draft of the plan obtained by The Washington Times shows that the Air Force is aiming to consolidate support operations under the umbrella of a single center, known as the Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center.

The tricky endeavor would shuffle day-to-day base management issues — such as construction, maintenance and procurement of equipment and supplies — from under the authority of the senior generals who command the bases to the leadership of a two-star general who would run the support center, according to the draft proposal.

The plan was born out of a directive from Air Force leadership last year to reduce headquarters operations costs at least 20 percent by 2019. It cites reductions contained in the Budget Control Act that were implemented by the Obama administration in 2011.

The consolidation would affect the service’s 10 major commands, each of which specializes in areas such as technical training, management of non-nuclear combat air power and global air mobility.

The generals who oversee those commands function as senior executives, ensuring that core programs and missions run efficiently and effectively, said Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman. Base management has included a measure of autonomy.

The proposal is similar to the way the Army and Navy are organized, but the Air Force has long resisted consolidation of support services, noting that bases are more integral parts of their operations than they are to other military branches.

Douglas Birkey, executive director of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said budget pressure is so extreme that Air Force officials have had “to come down very quickly on certain ramps to attain certain goals.” That pressure, he said, drives “some pretty aggressive moves” that achieve short-term objectives but “can undermine things in the long haul.”

“Today’s leaders have no other choice,” he said.

General vs. general

Senior Air Force officials say the plan will save money by eliminating redundancies in areas such as personnel. They say in the document that the shuffle will provide the Air Force with “a once in a lifetime opportunity to more effectively and efficiently manage installation resources.”

But one Pentagon official with knowledge of the plan and its potential implementation said it could cause rifts between generals who command the bases and the two-star generals who would be charged with overseeing the assigned resources.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, speculated that such a move could create communications issues capable of obstructing day-to-day operations such as base repairs, training and finance decisions.

Space planning, engineering programs, cyberforce training management and readiness training are just a few of the dozens of the capabilities that will be ripped from the control of the major commanders and realigned under support center management, according to the draft plan.

“I personally don’t think it’s going to work,” the official said.

Air Force top brass are reviewing the draft plan. If all goes well, they should approve it within the next several days, the official said. At the end of the month, Air Force officials will regroup and decide how to move forward.

It remains to be seen how the plan will be received. The official said the three- and four-star generals who run the major commands were not receptive to an earlier version in which they would have been required to cede a greater measure of authority to the support center’s control.

The “concept of operations” document — or initial draft — shows that the support center would have control of services such as fuel distribution, vehicle and support equipment, material management, small-arms training and ammunition allocation. Although the official said some of that framework was altered after the generals reviewed and rebuked the proposal, it is unclear how much of the framework was carried forward to the revised plan.

Retired Gen. Charles F. Wald, former deputy commander of U.S. European Command, said the Air Force has to implement structural changes because it cannot afford to chew through its budget at the current rate. Gen. Wald, who is now vice chairman and federal practice advisory partner for Deloitte, said the plan to consolidate base operations authority under the umbrella of a single support center on the surface “makes perfect business sense.”

“I think we should have done this 20 years ago,” he said. “Here’s the problem: I would have done it if I had known how to do it. I didn’t.”

Gen. Wald said Air Force generals who have resisted the plan probably are concerned that the support center will cost them power and prestige.

“The majority of people, when they think they’re losing oversight or authority or the size of their command or whatever, they don’t want to do that because — to a lot of people — how big you are what your footprint is, is indicative of how important you are,” he said.

Role of Congress

The Pentagon official said the Air Force has experienced difficulty nailing down an expected amount of savings, but that might not hinder the progress the Air Force is making toward getting lawmakers to embrace the plan, Gen. Wald said.

Gen. Wald said Air Force officials likely have informed House and Senate staffers of their intentions, paving the way for a receptive conversation.

A Senate Armed Services committee staffer said Monday that the Air Force draft document has not made its way to the top echelon of congressional staff.

Air Force officials originally wanted to begin implementing the plan in October and staff the support center with 350 people. The draft document shows that although some personnel would be allowed to continue work for the major commands, they could function only as liaisons or specialists.

Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said the service is determining whether that 350 number will stick and how much personnel will be reduced out of each major command. The numbers, she said, are still fluid.

If all goes according to plan, however, the support center will be fully operational by the end of 2016, per the document.

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Feds Fund 12 Offshore Wind Turbines… At $12 Million Each

The Obama administration has announced funding for three offshore wind power projects off the New Jersey, Oregon and Virginia coastlines. The administration has pledged up to $47 million for each project to bring a total of 67 megawatts (MW) of green power online.

The price tag for all this green power: a staggering $11.75 million per wind turbine. In terms of energy, the twelve offshore wind turbines will cost $2.1 million per MW. But the high price tag has not deterred the Obama administration from funding the costly wind projects.

“Offshore wind offers a large, untapped energy resource for the United States that can create thousands of manufacturing, construction and supply chain jobs across the country and drive billions of dollars in local economic investment,” said Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.

According to Windustry, a utility scale wind turbine cost from $1.3 million to $2.2 million per MW. Most “commercial-scale turbines installed today are 2 MW in size and cost roughly $3-$4 million installed.”

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) says that the costs of offshore wind power are still high at $204 per megwatthour (MWh) — compared with the costs of onshore wind power at $80 per MWh.

Each of the projects can get up to $47 million in federal funding. Dominion Virginia Power will get funding to construct two 6-MW offshore wind turbines that could produce enough energy to power 3,000 homes, according to the Energy Department.

Five 5-MW wind turbines will be built off the cost of Atlantic City, New Jersey that will act as a laboratory for researchers who wish to study the impacts of offshore wind. Coos Bay, Oregon will get six 5-MW that will be built 18 miles off the coast in 1,000-foot deep water. The Energy Department says that over 60 percent of U.S. offshore wind resources are in deep waters, in particular on the West Coast.

“The Energy Department is working with public and private partners to harness this untapped resource in a sustainable and economic manner. The offshore wind projects announced today further this commitment — bringing more clean, renewable energy to our homes and businesses, diversifying our energy portfolio, and reducing costs through innovation.”

Environmentalists and many Republicans have hammered the Obama administration for its support of wind power. Republicans argue that the wind industry has benefited from subsidies and green energy mandates for decades and federal funding for such projects are wasteful.

Environmentalists are angry with the administration for not holding wind power companies accountable for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of birds every year. One study from 2013 said that 573,000 birds and 888,000 bats were killed by wind turbines every year, many of these birds are even federally protected.

The first energy company to be punished for bird deaths came in November 2013. A subsidiary of Duke Energy had to pay $1 million in fines for the killing of 160 birds at two wind farms in Wyoming.

But this has so far been the only wind energy case that federal officials have prosecuted. And it looks like there may not be many more as the Obama administration allowed energy companies to get 30-year permits to kill federally protected birds and eagles, enraging environmentalists.

“ABC has heard from thousands of citizens from across the country who are outraged that the [Interior Department] wants to let the wind industry legally kill our country’s iconic Bald and Golden eagles,”  said Michael Hutchins, National Coordinator of ABC’s Bird Smart Wind Energy Campaign.

“The rule lacks a firm foundation in scientific justification and was generated without the benefit of a full assessment of its impacts on eagle populations,” Hutchins added.

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House Creates Benghazi Select Committee with Help from Seven Democrats

Seven Democrats crossed party lines and joined House Republicans to establish a Select Committee to investigate the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya on Thursday night. 

These Democrats were Reps. Ron Barber (D-AZ), John Barrow (D-GA), Mike McIntyre (D-NC), Patrick Murphy (D-FL), Collin Peterson (D-MN), Nick Rahall (D-WV), and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ). The resolution passed 232-186.

Speaker Boehner has yet to announce which members will be part of the committee, but some lawmakers gave their thoughts as to what kind of representatives should be chosen.

“I think Trey Gowdy is a good choice for chairman. The Select Committee became essential. You needed one committee to bring it all together and to bring all the parties in the room at one time,” said Rep. Peter King (R-NY) to Breitbart News. “As long as the [members chosen] are professional. We have to be careful that we don’t overplay this. There’s real evidence here. We have to be responsible—starting with Trey. He’s very responsible,” he said, noting the importance of having members on the committee who “are solid” and “know how to ask questions and conduct themselves intelligently.”

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), a longtime outspoken advocate for a Select Committee and member of the Judiciary Committee, told Breitbart News that Republican leadership needs to be careful who they choose for the committee.

“They got a good guy in Trey Gowdy, who's probably the best cross examiner in the House. But it means the difference between getting to the bottom of things as the Watergate committee did—of course, in that case, you had Republicans trying to help get to the bottom of things instead of trying to delay and obfuscate,” Gohmert said. He added, “But if you don't have the best cross examiners—the people who know how to make a case—then you end up with wonderful, well-meaning people that let a real problem like Whitewater get away from them with not much in the way of results. So it's very important who he puts on there. And I hope he gives it proper consideration."

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), a member of the Judiciary Committee, told Breitbart News he believes the Benghazi issue is “worn out,” saying, “I think we’ve worn Benghazi to a thread.”

However, Conyers recommended Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as his top picks for members of the Select Committee.

Nadler himself appeared surprised when Breitbart News told him that Conyers thought he would represent Democrats best on the Committee. “I haven’t given it a thought at all,” Nadler said, explaining, “The whole [Benghazi Select Committee] thing is a fraud. There’s no scandal there. They’re trying to make a big political thing there. It’s ridiculous.”

Speaker Boehner is expected to announce names for the Benghazi Select Committee on Friday.

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Dissenting Scientists Label White House Climate Report As ‘Pseudoscience’

Climate scientists have said the White House’s National Climate Assessment (NCA) resembles pseudoscience more than actual science.

The National Climate Data Center released its third NCA on Tuesday, which warns of an ever-worsening environment and extreme temperature rises due to man-made carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels. But it has been panned in some quarters.

“This National Assessment is much closer to pseudoscience than it is to science,” wrote scientists Patrick Michaels and Paul Knappenberger of the libertarian Cato Institute in their comments submitted to the Obama administration.

“It clearly believes that virtually everything in our society is tremendously dependent on the surface temperature, and, because of that, we are headed towards certain and inescapable destruction, unless we take its advice and decarbonize our economy, pronto,” Michaels and Knappenberger added.

The NCA says that the U.S. average temperature has risen between 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit to 1.9 degrees Fahrenheit since 1895, with most of that increase occurring since 1980. This temperature rise, the report argues, has been linked to increased extreme weather, like hurricanes and droughts, as well as ecosystem imbalance across the country.

The NCA warns that the average temperature could increase another 4 degrees Fahrenheit in the coming decades, causing more extreme weather, sea level rises and deaths. The NCA suggests a slew of regulatory solutions from cap-and-trade to green energy subsidies to mitigate global warming.

“It is to provide cover for a massive regulatory intrusion, and concomitant enormous costs in resources and individual liberty,” Michaels and Knappenberger wrote. “History tells us that when scientists willingly endorse sweeping governmental agendas fueled by dodgy science, bad things soon happen.”

Michaels’ and Knappenberger’s 75-page critique of the NCA points out the many weak points and flaws present in the government’s analysis of the impact of global warming. For example, the NCA relies on not only peer-reviewed scientific literature, but also non-peer reviewed work from environmental activist groups — which the government did not disclose.

The libertarian Cato scholars point to environmental and political advocacy groups cited in just the NCA’s chapter on water resources. The groups include the Union of Concerned Scientists (who are not actual scientists), the Southwest Climate Alliance and the Water Climate Utility Alliance.

Michaels and Knappenberger also pointed out that the measure of climate sensitivity used by the report is 40 percent higher than what more recent scientific literature points to. Climate sensitivity is the measure of how much warming would occur if carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were doubled. The current literature puts that number at about 1.5 degrees Celsius, but the government used estimates from the United Nations’ 2007 climate report putting climate sensitivity at 2 degrees Celsius to 3.3 degrees Celsius.

One of the most pointed criticisms made by Michaels and Knappenberger hit the Obama administration’s claims on extreme weather. But as the two scientists point out, even the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there little evidence of increased extreme weather.

“There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change,” the IPCC said in its latest climate assessment.

“The assessment is woefully ignorant of humanity’s ability to adapt and prosper in response to challenges,” wrote Michaels and Knappenberger. “The quintessence of this is the truly dreadful chapter on human health and climate change.”

Evidence presented by University of Colorado climate scientists Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. also shows that there has been no increase in extreme weather events due to global warming.

“It is misleading and just plain incorrect to claim that disasters associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or droughts have increased on climate timescales either in the United States or globally,” Pielke said in his testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee last year. “It is further incorrect to associate the increasing costs of disasters with the emission of greenhouse gases.”

“Hurricanes have not increased in the U.S. in frequency, intensity or normalized damage since at least 1900,” Pielke added. “The same holds for tropical cyclones globally since at least 1970.”

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John Boehner gives Benghazi committee broad powers

House Speaker John A. Boehner laid out details of his proposed Benghazi investigative committee Tuesday night, calling for a 7-5 split between Republicans and Democrats — drawing a stern response from Democrats who said that is unfair and taints the investigation from the start.

Mr. Boehner said the committee won’t have a set deadline for finishing its investigation, but will go until it has the answers to questions about the run-up to the 2012 terrorist attack in Libya, the administration’s handling of the attack, and the White House’s effort to shape public perception of the attack afterward.

“It is unfortunate that it has to come to this, but when four Americans are killed by terrorists in a well-coordinated assault, the American people will not tolerate the evasion we have seen from the White House,” the speaker said.

He said the investigation had to have an open-ended time frame because the Obama administration has demonstrated it isn’t willing to cooperate.

His resolution, which Republicans are preparing for floor action later this week, would give the committee chairman — whom Mr. Boehner has said would be Rep. Trey Gowdy — the power to issue subpoenas.

Democrats have objected to the outlines of the committee makeup and powers.

In a letter to Mr. Boehner late Tuesday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer insisted the membership be changed so there are an even number of Democrats and Republicans, and said decisions about whom to subpoena should be made only with the agreement of both parties.

“If you truly want this new select committee to be bipartisan and fair — and to be taken seriously by the American people — we call on you to reconsider this approach before bringing this measure to the House floor for a vote,” the two lawmakers said.

The new investigative committee would supersede all other House committees that are already conducting investigations. All of their files would have to be turned over to the new committee.

That would effectively end the ongoing investigation into Benghazi that House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa has been running.

In one cost-saving move, Mr. Boehner proposed that the new investigative committee try to borrow staff from existing committees.

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Hard-Hitting NSA Reform Bill Starts Moving Through Congress

The most significant National Security Agency legislative overhaul, the USA Freedom Act, saw fresh movement toward a vote in Congress Monday after more than six months of delay since it was introduced last year.

The House Judiciary Committee announced plans to move the bill to markup on Wednesday, where it will have to clear a committee vote before moving to the full House floor for a vote. According to congressional aides cited in a Guardian report, the bill is expected to move through the committee with bipartisan support.

“This will start to look like a reasonable path forward for surveillance reform,” the aide said.

After initial skepticism, Virginia Republican representative and House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte will now support the bill despite push back from House Republican leadership, whom preferred a more docile bill from the House Intelligence Committee allowing the government to subpoena data without prior judicial approval.

Co-written and sponsored by PATRIOT Act author and Republican Wisconsin Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, the bill is by far the most in-depth overhaul of NSA legality and procedure since the leaks of classified Internet and telephone bulk surveillance programs by former agency contractor Edward Snowden last year.

The bill specifically rewrites PATRIOT Act Section 215 and FISA Section 702, which are the primary sources of legal justification for the mass collection and surveillance of Americans’ and foreign citizens’ phone records, Internet communications, metadata and more.

Significant support for the USA Freedom Act already extends into the Senate thanks to Democratic co-author, judiciary chair, president pro tempore and Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy. The bill carries the nearly unanimous consent of the tech community and a comparable ratio of privacy and civil liberties advocates.

Roughly an hour after the House Judiciary Committee’s announcement, the intelligence committee announced it will markup its bill, the FISA Transparency and Modernization Act, on Thursday.

“This bill directly addresses the privacy concerns many Americans have expressed over bulk collection. The bill ends bulk collection of telephone metadata and increases transparency while maintaining the tools our government needs to keep Americans and our allies safe,” committee leaders Republican Mike Rogers of Michigan and Democrat Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland said in a joint statement Monday.

“We believe this bill responds to the concerns many members of Congress have expressed and can be the compromise vehicle to reform FISA while preserving important counterterrorism capabilities,” the committee leaders said.

The intelligence committee announcement effectively sets off a race to Speaker of the House John Boehner, who will decide which bill will be brought to the floor, and it what order.

Though the committee compromised some of the bill’s original language to allow the NSA to collect phone data on Americans based on ”reasonable articulable suspicion” and the records of people two degrees separated from a target, it only permits individual collection – not bulk, sweeping dragnet collection and storage.

The bill has 143 House cosponsors and 21 cosponsors for the Senate version. Sensenbrenner, Goodlatte, Virginia Republican Randy Forbes and Democrats John Conyers of Michigan, Jerrold Nadler of New York and Bobby Scott of Virginia will present the legislation to the committee on Wednesday.

“As the Committee of primary jurisdiction, we have conducted robust oversight of the intelligence-gathering programs operated under FISA and have come to the conclusion that these programs are in need of reform to protect our privacy, including prohibiting bulk collection under Section 215,” the six congressmen said in a joint statement.

“Over the past several months, we have worked together across party lines and with the Administration and have reached a bipartisan solution that includes real protections for Americans’ civil liberties, robust oversight, and additional transparency, while preserving our ability to protect America’s national security. We look forward to taking up this legislation on Wednesday and continuing to work with House leaders to reform these programs.”

The White House has yet to take a position on either bill facing markup in the House later this week.

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Grass Roots Groups Join in Campaign to Terminate Common Core Standards Project

Breitbart News has learned that American Principles Project (APP), one of the nation’s leading organizations working to defeat the Common Core standards, will release a letter on Monday morning addressed to Gov. Mary Fallin (R-OK), chair of the National Governor’s Association (NGA), asking her to terminate the Common Core project.

The letter, signed by grass roots groups and individuals opposed to the Common Core initiative, is addressed to Fallin as governor of Oklahoma and as chair of the NGA. The NGA is co-author of the Common Core State Standards and co-owner of the copyright to the centralized standards along with the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).

Fallin has been supportive of the Common Core standards, but a bill that repeals the standards in Oklahoma has passed both chambers of the legislature and an amended bill may end up going to conference. The repeal of Common Core and a decision not to simply “rebrand” them in some fashion could place Fallin in an uncomfortable position due to her role as NGA chairman.

Indiana became the first state to officially repeal the Common Core standards, but Gov. Mike Pence (R) has drawn the ire of grassroots groups who oppose the standards by signing off on replacement standards that are strikingly similar to Common Core and, in some cases even inferior.

“I support passing legislation that increases classroom rigor and accountability while guaranteeing that Oklahoma public education is protected from federal interference,” Fallin cautiously said in a statement that reflected the NGA position that the Common Core standards were led by states without intrusion by the federal government.

“The American people know that government has drifted away from them and no longer responds to their will,” said Emmett McGroarty, director of APP Education, in an email statement to Breitbart News. “This letter details how state government has been turned into the tool of the federal executive branch, rather than responding to the will of the people.”

“Governor Fallin, though, has a wonderful opportunity to stand up for the American people and the Constitution that is intended to protect their rights, including their right to have a say in what their children learn and who teaches it to them,” McGroarty added.

Accompanied by a “Joint Statement Regarding the National Governors Association’s Common Core Standards Initiative and the Constitutional Structure,” the letter to Fallin was sent exclusively to Breitbart News in advance of its release, and states:

NGA’s activities, including its ownership, development and propagation of the Common Core, have caused profound harm to our constitutional structure. NGA has enabled corporations and other private interests to drive education policy and, concomitantly, compromised the power of parents. It has enlisted the power of the federal government to bring about these changes and, in so doing, has weakened the power of states to defend the authority and rights of parents and other citizens.

More specifically, NGA has assisted the federal government in employing a strategy against the states that has divided and conquered the state checks and balances that are intended to guard against federal overreach.  It has presided over the development of math standards that lock children into a defective education, one that does not prepare children for studies in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) or for admission to competitive public and private universities. It has presided over the development of English standards that fail to prepare children for authentic college work in the humanities and that weaken the formation of strong citizen-leaders and individuals of substance who are fully capable of exercising their liberties.

The pushback against the Common Core rests on parents’ love for their children and their defense of the Constitution that protects their rights to form their children and direct their education. It is a movement based on truth, and on highly informed citizens –citizens who follow in the footsteps of the Founders. It is a movement that continues to grow and which will be victorious.

We respectfully ask that, as chair of the NGA, you end the Common Core project. We respectfully submit that your decisions on this matter will define your legacy.

Signers include Emmett McGroarty and Jane Robbins of American Principles Project; Phyllis Schlafly and Glyn Wright of Eagle Forum; Jim Stergios and Jamie Gass of Pioneer Institute; Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America; Tim Wildmon and Sandy Rios, American Family Association; Paul Caprio of Family Pac Federal; Stacy Mott of Smart Girl Politics Action; William A. Estrada, Esq. and J. Michael Smith, Esq. of Home School Legal Defense Association; Michael Farris of Parentalrights.org; talk show host Donna Hearne of Bott Radio Network; and Michelle Malkin, Conservative syndicated columnist.

Parents and other visitors to the letter’s website may also sign the letter.

In their joint statement, the signers emphasize that NGA is “not a governmental entity,” “does not have grants of legislative authority from the states,” and, as a private organization, is “not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests of other sunshine laws.”

The statement retraces the genesis of the Common Core initiative, including the United States Education Department’s (USED) Race to the Top (RttT) program, that lured states into adopting the Common Core through stimulus bill competitive grants, and Common Core’s massive funding by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has awarded grants for the development, promotion, and implementation of the standards to: NGA, CCSSO, the National Association of State Boards of Education, PTA’s, the American Association of School Administrators, the American Federation of Teachers Educational Foundation (teachers union), the National Education Association Foundation for the Improvement of Education (teachers union), the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and WestEd, among many other groups and organizations.

“NGA has taken the lead role in persuading the federal government to foist the Common Core standards, and indeed the entire Common Core system, onto the states,” reads the joint statement.

The signers go on to describe the Common Core standards as being “of poor quality,” and “age-inappropriate for young children.” The initiative’s changes to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) regulations in order to collect student data are identified as “patently unfaithful to the underlying statute.”

In addition, the joint statement argues, “the NGA’s Common Core efforts pose a grave threat to the constitutional structure and to the rights of parents and other citizens.”

With regard to the role of the USED in the Common Core initiative, the signers describe it as “constitutionally incoherent:”

USED does not interact directly with the citizen, but rather works through state departments of education, which it funds in exchange for policy obedience. This deceives parents and other citizens. What appears to have been a decision by a state board or state department of education to change a policy or regulation or to request the legislature to change a law is often, in truth, an adaptation made at the behest of the federal government. State government loses its integrity when this happens.

As NGA chairman, Fallin has presided over the organization’s America Works initiative in which the need for the Common Core standards is emphasized in order to prepare students for “skilled” labor jobs, a goal that demonstrates the desire of government and corporate elitists to manage the workforce in the United States.

According to the NGA:

Preparing America’s 21st century workforce to stay competitive not only calls for national attention but demands gubernatorial leadership. Governors across the United States are providing that leadership. As demand for skilled workers continues to rise, governors are playing an increasingly pivotal role in aligning states’ education and training resources with the needs of their growing economies. Because governors are responsible for both public education and economic development, they are uniquely positioned to foster stronger connections between education and the workforce. Using a combination of the policy components outlined above, governors can do more to align the education pipeline with the needs of employers and thus benefit their citizens and their economies.

Through Governor Fallin’s leadership, the National Governors Association will continue to support governors and other state leaders in their efforts to increase the educational and economic opportunities available to all citizens.

According to APP and its collaborators, however, “It is inexplicable that the NGA and its partners would not condemn the federal government’s incentivizing education policy-making - pitting one state against the other in a scramble to change policies to garner points in a federal grant competition.”

“The Common Core scheme represents the worst of opaque, quasi-governmental chicanery accomplished at the expense of individual constitutional rights,” the letter’s signers conclude. “The Framers never would have imagined this.”

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House GOP: Obama withholding Benghazi email is ‘criminal’

House Republicans accused the Obama administration Thursday of “perhaps criminal” behavior for having withheld for months key email that sheds light on how the administration framed its post-Benghazi talking points, potentially violating a congressional subpoena.

House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, said Secretary of State John F. Kerry will have to come before Congress to explain why his department refused to release the email until forced to do so by a judge.

Meanwhile, a retired Air Force brigadier general who was in the U.S. Africa Command’s headquarters the night of the 2012 attack on the American diplomatic post in Benghazi testified that he and others quickly realized the assault was spawned by terrorists. The general said it was either negligence or willful ignorance that led the White House, amid a re-election campaign, to say the violence was ignited by anger over a video.

Several high-profile Republican senators said the revelations, combined with questions still unanswered, should spur Congress to create an independent investigative committee to get the answers.

“If the White House won’t explain it, Secretary Kerry should come to the Capitol to explain why he defied an official congressional subpoena. And the White House needs to understand that this investigation will not end until the entire truth is revealed and justice and accountability are served,” Mr. Boehner said.

Judicial Watch, a public interest law firm, obtained the email under an open-records request enforced by a court order. The email shows a top White House national security official shaping how U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice should talk about the attack on a round of Sunday political talk shows. The email said blame should be placed on an Internet video.

The White House dismissed the rekindled questions.

“This is a conspiracy theory in search of a conspiracy,” press secretary Jay Carney said.

But he altered his explanation from Wednesday, when he said the reason the email wasn’t turned over in response to requests was that it wasn’t about Benghazi. Instead, Mr. Carney said it was a State Department decision and Mr. Kerry’s department would have to provide the answers.

Mr. Carney did acknowledge Thursday that the email mentioned Benghazi once, in a question about how administration officials should respond to a report in a British newspaper that the U.S. ignored a warning 48 hours before the attack.

Mr. Carney said Republicans in Congress should drop the Benghazi investigation and instead focus on the economy. He also said the president is focused on finding the perpetrators who killed four Americans in Benghazi.

“If anyone doubts that, they should ask … any friends and family members of Osama bin Laden,” Mr. Carney said.

Republicans in Congress counter that Mr. Obama also promised to bring the perpetrators of the Benghazi attack to justice, yet nobody has been apprehended more than 18 months later. The government has secured a sealed indictment in federal court that reportedly names a number of suspects including Ahmed Abu Khattalah, the founder of Ansar al-Sharia.

Immediately after the attack, the Obama administration said it was a mob protest spawned by an Internet video mocking Islam. Such a protest broke out in Cairo on Sept. 11, 2012.

But Republicans said the CIA, the Defense Department and parts of the State Department quickly realized that the Benghazi attack was not a protest. They question why the White House deployed Ms. Rice to the talk shows nearly a week later to repeat that message.

Rep. Darrell E. Issa, California Republican and the House’s top investigator of Benghazi, said Thursday that it was “perhaps criminal” of the Obama administration to withhold the email.

“The facts are coming out that this administration has knowingly withheld documents pursuant to congressional subpoenas,” Mr. Issa said as he opened a hearing into the administration’s handling of the deadly attack, which killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

Testifying at the hearing was Brig. Gen. Robert Lovell, who was overseeing intelligence for Africom the night of the attack and said the military knew early on that the violence wasn’t about a video.

He also said the decision not to respond with military action likely was made outside of the Defense Department. He said the military was waiting on a request from the State Department — a request that never came.

“Basically, there was a lot of looking to the State Department for what they wanted and the deference to the Libyan people and the sense of deference to the desires of the State Department in terms of what they would like to have,” the general testified.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, California Republican, said Gen. Lovell’s role didn’t give him reliable insight into the scope of options available to commanders.

“The Armed Services Committee has interviewed more than a dozen witnesses in the operational chain of command that night, yielding thousands of pages of transcripts, e-mails, and other documents. We have no evidence that Department of State officials delayed the decision to deploy what few resources DoD had available to respond,” Mr. McKeon said in a statement.

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Boehner’s Last Two Opponents Were Fired From Their Jobs

John Boehner’s last two serious challengers for his Ohio eighth district congressional seat both got fired during their campaigns — and one of them was told explicitly that he was getting canned for running against Boehner.

The Daily Caller exclusively reported Monday that Boehner’s tea party primary challenger J.D. Winteregg was fired from his job as an adjunct professor at Ohio’s Cedarville University for running an anti-Boehner campaign ad accusing the speaker of “Electile Dysfunction.” Winteregg is challenging Boehner in the district’s May 6 Republican primary.

“I would say the raciness of it, sure,” was the reason the Christian college fired Winteregg, Cedarville University spokesman Mark Weinstein told TheDC, referring to the sexual innuendo in Winteregg’s ad. Weinstein also told FoxNews.com that “(At Cedarville) we don’t get into politics.”

But Cedarville University chancellor Dr. William Brown participated in a press conference Monday in Ohio calling for Boehner, his congressman, to pass immigration reform. Brown participated in the event one day before joining a group of pastors in flying to Washington, D.C. to meet with their representatives to discuss the issue. Cedarville University has featured an internship in Boehner’s congressional office as an official discipline-related experience for students.

Winteregg is not the first Boehner challenger to lose his employment while on the campaign trail.

Justin Coussoule, a West Point graduate and former army captain working as a purchasing manager for Cincinnati-based consumer products manufacturer Procter & Gamble in Ohio when he ran against Boehner as a Democrat in 2010, was fired from his job for taking on the veteran lawmaker.

“In Justin’s case he was faced with resignation or termination from Procter & Gamble. They were surprised that anyone would want to run against John Boehner because he had been, as they said, so good for their business,” Alliea Phipps, Coussoule’s 2010 campaign manager, told TheDC.

A vice president of government relations at Procter & Gamble took Coussoule out for coffee after he first decided to run against Boehner, and pressured him not to do it.

“The exact phrase was, ‘Why would you want to run against John Boehner? He’s been so good for our business,” Phipps said. But Coussoule decided to run anyway, taking out a loan on his house and signing up campaign staff to work for free.

Boehner reportedly owns between $15,0001 and $50,000 in Procter & Gamble stock, which he reported on his 2012 financial disclosure. Boehner held only between $1,001 to $15,000 in the company’s stock, according to his 2009 disclosure, which he filed before the race against Coussoule. His 2010 disclosure shows him holding between $15,001 and $50,000 in the company’s stock. Procter & Gamble contributed $5,000 to Boehner’s 2010 campaign.

In April 2010, shortly before Coussoule became the Democratic nominee in the race in May, a Procter & Gamble official told him that he needed to resign or be terminated, specifically because he was running for Congress in the eighth district, according to Phipps.

The company specified that its policy forbidding him from keeping his job if he won the primary only applied to him. Coussoule chose to be terminated. Coussoule’s wife, who also worked at the company, was transferred out of state several weeks before the election. Coussoule, who had two small children, decided to move with her after the election, and now no longer lives in Ohio.

“They have a policy of giving their employees a hiatus to run for office. Justin had filed for that before the primary. They had another employee who was an elected official and another employee who was running for [local] office in 2010,” Phipps said. “He followed all of their procedures and their processes to the letter. He had done everything procedurally that he should have done.”

Boehner defeated Coussoule 66 to 34 percent in the November 2010 election. Phipps noted that “[Boehner] actually had to come home and campaign. It was the first time ever.”

Boehner has been forced to mount a campaign in his district this year to hold off Winteregg, paying people to go door-to-door for him and sending out mailings touting his campaign slogan, “One of Us.”

“So a Democrat is trying to help fabricate some kind of ridiculous conspiracy theory? This just shows the Obama political machine will do whatever it takes to try and weaken the Speaker’s campaign to cut spending, repeal ObamaCare and create jobs,” Cory Fritz, spokesman for Boehner’s political office, told TheDC.

Procter & Gamble did not return a request for comment.

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