Video: Harry Reid Tables His Own Bill

Let's set the table here. First, the Democrat controlled Senate has violated its Constitutional mandate to pass an annual budget; it's been more than 800 days. In this debt ceiling debate, the House has passed two bills and sent both to the Senate. Harry Reid has refused to allow votes on those bills. Instead, he's led votes to 'table' them while not passing a bill of his own.

In fact, when Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called for a vote on Reid's bill, Reid objected.

The man is insane.



h/t Weasel Zippers

Turkey Military Chiefs Resign (Not Good)

Turkey's secular military has been at odds with an increasingly Islamist government ever since the AKP Party came to power nearly ten years ago. The military, an important check against the rise of Islamism there, suffered a major blow when senior officials were arrested and charged with plotting a coup last year. Now, senior officers are resigning in protest. With Turkey having the second largest military within NATO, the problem, obviously, is what fills the vacuum.

Via BBC:

The chief of the Turkish armed forces, Isik Kosaner, has resigned along with the army, navy and air force heads.

They were furious about the arrest of senior officers, accused of plotting, shortly before a round of military promotions.

A series of meetings between Gen Kosaner and PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan failed to resolve their differences.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul moved quickly to appoint General Necdet Ozel as the new army chief.

Gen Ozel is widely expected to be swiftly elevated to chief of the general staff in place of General Kosaner. Tradition dictates that only the head of the army can take over the top job.

There has been a history of tension between the secularist military and the governing AK party, with the two sides engaged in a war of words for the past two years over allegations that parts of the military had been plotting a coup.

Investigations into those allegations, known as the "Sledgehammer" conspiracy - appear to be the root cause of today's resignations, says the BBC's correspondent in Istanbul, with the senior military wanting to go ahead with scheduled annual promotions for some of the officers implicated - and the government refusing.

It is very important to view these developments through the prism of the Muslim Brotherhood's 'Arab spring.' Turkey was home to the last Islamic Caliphate - the Ottoman Empire. The Muslim Brotherhood seeks to reestablish that empire; it's why the Brotherhood was founded. If Turkey's military falls to the Islamists, which becomes all but academic at this point, the Brotherhood has won yet another major victory in the region.

Here is a video report via GWP:

Investors Business Daily: White House Knew about Fast and Furious

When former Special Agent in Charge (SAC) for the Phoenix division, William Newell, testified before the House Oversight Committee on June 26th, Rep. Labrador (R-UT) asked him about some e-mail correspondence Newell had with Kevin O'Reilly, it may have been the most revealing line of questioning of the day.

Via IBD:

A former ATF special agent tells Congress a National Security Council staffer was informed about Operation Fast and Furious before guns allowed into Mexico wound up at the murder scene of a U.S. agent.

The latest evidence that both the White House and attorney general knew and approved of Project Gunrunner and its deadly offshoot, Operation Fast and Furious, came this week in the testimony of William Newell, ATF special agent in charge of the Phoenix office, before Rep. Darrell Issa's House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

That the "stench of cover-up," as Fox News analyst Brit Hume described the administration's handling of the matter, may reach even into the Oval Office itself was evidenced by Newell's testimony that he communicated with Kevin O'Reilly, a staffer on President Obama's National Security Council, about Operation Fast and Furious in September 2010.

O'Reilly was national security director for North America tasked with monitoring the activities of Mexican drug cartels. We are asked to believe he inquired about a program that was providing the cartels with guns but kept what he found out to himself.

As if that didn't implicate Newell enough, in his e-mail to O'Reilly, he included the phrase, 'You didn't get this from me.' When asked why he was communicating with a White House staffer, Newell said it was because the two had been friends for several years.

Uh, yeah, right.

Read it all.