Let's begin with the conclusion: Barack Obama is releasing dangerous terrorists against the recommendations of military and intelligence professionals, he's doing so at a time when the threat level from radical Islamists is elevated, and he is lying about it. He is lying about how many jihadists he has released and lying about their backgrounds, all part of his effort to empty the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay.

We write this knowing the accusation is a strong one and that the word lying will offend the sensibilities of the establishment media. There is an unwritten rule that requires euphemizing lies with gentler descriptions, especially when talking about the president of the United States.

President Barack Obama says his administration will continue releasing terrorists from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, so long as those released are less dangerous than the jihadists currently fighting against the U.S. and its interests.

The bizarre argument comes in a new interview with Olivier Knox of Yahoo! News and is one of several comments in their discussion that reinforces the president's stubborn nonchalance on issues related to jihad. Obama also shrugs off concerns about recidivism of former Guantanamo detainees, suggesting that only a "handful" of former detainees have returned to the fight and claiming that only "low-level" terrorists have been released from the detention facility. Both claims

Law enforcement officials in San Bernardino and Los Angeles may have investigated Syed Farook one week before the shooting on the community development center on December 2, 2015, that left 14 dead and 17 injured, according to a review of police communications immediately following the attacks.

Federal and local authorities have insisted that neither of the attackers had aroused suspicion before the assault earlier this month and that both Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, were unknown to law enforcement and US intelligence. But conversations between law enforcement officials in the hours after the shootings leave a different impression.

Farook is first identified by name at approximately 11:40am local time, just

Barack Obama says he wants the truth. On November 21, the New York Times reported allegations that military intelligence officials provided the president with skewed assessments that minimized the threat from ISIS and overstated the success of U.S. efforts against the group. The Times story was an update of reporting from the Daily Beast earlier this fall.

In many ways, the reaction to the horrific attacks in Paris has been familiar.

Last week in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton resurrected one of her favorite tales—the story of her unsuccessful effort to join the Marine Corps in the mid-1970s. The account has drawn skepticism over the years, and for good reason. She has offered little to back it up. But it’s the perfect anecdote to illustrate what she’d like people to see as the challenges to her candidacy—sexism and ageism—and so it’s proven irresistible.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie slammed Secretary of State John Kerry for remarks the top diplomat made Tuesday

If Donald Trump supporters haven’t abandoned him yet, there’s little reason to believe they’ll do so now. But it’s worth laying out a slice of what it is they’re defending, what it is they’re excusing, and what it is they’re encouraging. Let’s review the past 72 hours of crazy with Donald Trump.

At some point, the most obvious explanation is rope-a-dope. 

Overcoming deep personal ambivalence and a battery of attacks from conservative complainers outside Congress, Paul Ryan became the 54th speaker of the House on October 29, 2015. To call this improbable understates the case. Not primarily because Ryan is young (he’s 45) or because Ryan is first a policy maven (his colleagues used to worry that he was too wonky to be an effective communicator) or because Ryan is an inveterate optimist in an age of pessimism (though his sanguinity is irrepressible).

One of the most memorable moments from the first Democratic presidential debate was an unexpected one. Bernie Sanders, the Democratic-socialist senator from Vermont who is leading the polls in New Hampshire, took a question about the email scandal that has badly complicated Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Rather than use it as a truncheon to hurt his primary opponent, Sanders took the occasion to defend her.

Twenty-five minutes before the start of Thursday’s hearing of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, Charles Woods stood alone behind the witness table, marveling at the chaos around him. A gaggle of still photographers was rehearsing their movements for the arrival of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Young people in smart outfits scurried about with stern looks on their faces, as if the urgency of their movement reflected the importance of their various errands. 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton blamed an internet video for the Benghazi attacks in her conversations with family members of those killed despite having told a foreign leader two days earlier that the video played no role and having emailed daughter Chelsea that a terrorist group had carried out the attack.

The Benghazi Select Committee holds an open hearing with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Thursday. Clinton has said she is willing to stay as long as there are questions.

There was never any doubt that Democrats in Washington would launch an aggressive campaign to discredit the House Select Committee on Benghazi. The only question was when they’d do it.

That inevitable effort got under way last week, after House majority leader Kevin McCarthy boasted to Sean Hannity that the committee’s work had hurt Hillary Clinton’s public standing.

It was the middle of the night in Washington, D.C.—the early morning of September 30, 2015, in Iraq—when a three-star Russian general walked into the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, announced that Russian jets would soon begin airstrikes in Syria, and demanded that the United States stop flying combat missions in the country.

The House Select Committee on Benghazi will be making public next week new documents that demonstrate Sidney Blumenthal was seeking business in Libya as he was advising then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on U.S. policy in the country. According to a letter from Chairman Trey Gowdy to Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the committee, at least once Clinton sought to aid Blumenthal's business interests in Libya. 

Earlier this summer, we learned the Pentagon’s inspector general is investigating allegations that the intelligence on ISIS was manipulated. Analysts at U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida, formally complained to the IG that analysis contradicting the Obama administration’s narrative on ISIS was routinely challenged, rewritten, or disregarded. The administration was eager to sell the story that the campaign against ISIS was going well; much of the intelligence made clear it wasn’t. That intelligence was buried, and the happy talk continued.

Deep in the transcript of the interview ABC’s David Muir conducted with Hillary Clinton yesterday comes an indirect but very tough shot at the man she worked for and hopes to replace. In the course of answering a question about her mother, Clinton described her mother’s difficult upbringing and praised her for her hard work. Her mother’s experience, she said, and those struggling to get ahead today, inspire her presidential run.

When Donald Trump botched a question Thursday about General Qassem Suleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Force, it wasn’t the first time.

In the days before the Fox News debate last week, Donald Trump said he wasn’t looking to attack any of his Republican rivals unless he was attacked. That’s changed, apparently.

Donald Trump says he wants to talk about issues.

To paraphrase Lincoln, if we could first know where Iran is and whither Iran is tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it. To evaluate the Iran deal, we need, to the degree possible, to understand the Iranian regime, its nature and its history, its past and present behavior. 

The bad news is that the Obama administration doesn’t want us to have all the information available to judge that regime and its behavior. The good news is that Congress can insist the information be provided.

Keene, N.H.
Shirley Paulson showed up to 50-cent wing night at Lab ’n Lager in downtown Keene not for a cheap dozen of the highly addictive garlic jalapeno wings but because she wanted a crack at New Jersey governor Chris Christie.

It’s not over. And it’s likely to end badly.

In an interview on CNN last night, Donald Trump suggested that Megyn Kelly’s tough questioning was inspired by her menstrual cycle. “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes,” Trump told CNN's Don Lemon on Friday night. “Blood coming out of her—wherever.”

Cleveland 
In the first Republican debate of the 2016 presidential campaign, frontrunner Donald Trump spoke for two minutes more than anyone else on stage, a fact that provided a distinct advantage for the other nine candidates on stage. Trump’s performance here tonight was part populist bravado, part indignant defensiveness—and a whole lot of incoherence. Trump opened the debate by refusing to pledge his support for the Republican nominee.

Des Moines