In the socialist takeover of the free world in the book Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell described a totalitarian society where ‘good’ would be called ‘bad,’ and ‘bad’ would be called ‘good’.’ He also describes official deception, secret surveillance, and manipulation of history by a totalitarian state headed by the quasi-divine Party leader known ‘affectionately’ as Big Brother.

The similarities to our present government are more than a little troubling.  And indeed, we now have a topsy-turvy way of speaking and thinking that were forecast in that prophetic tome.  For instance, morality is now ‘immoral’ and backward, and immorality is ‘progressive’ and ‘tolerant of differences’; while those who contribute the most to society and its economy are ‘takers’ and ‘greedy,’ and those who benefit without contribution are ‘victims.’

In the latest wave of Orwellian doublespeak the American television networks have followed the current Administration’s lead and have set out to villainize those who seek to preserve America’s foundational law and the personal liberty it ensures–the U.S. Constitution. On NBC’s Revolution the futuristic survivors of the worldwide blackout are being oppressed by the evil totalitarian “Patriots.” Likewise, on Person of Interest, the villain terrorist hacker group is called Patriots.  The same is true on NBC’s The Blacklist. Watch for villains called Patriots in more upcoming television programs and Hollywood movies. In short, the communist re-education camp that is network television would have the low information voter believe that a patriot is one who seeks to enslave and oppress.

For the first 200 years of this nation’s existence, most of its citizens would have proudly and boldly declared themselves to be patriots, defenders of the Constitution, and would have waged war on anyone who sought to undermine it and its principles–foreign or domestic. Now, however, those who adhere to foundational principles of personal and economic liberty are put on government watch lists, and derided by leftist politicians, the media, and educational institutions as hate groups and anarchists.

When did PATRIOT become a dirty word? It happened when the left decided the Constitution was holding them back from full implementation of their socialistic form of government. Now, anyone who is a patriot is branded a backward kook, a racist, or a terrorist. Does this fit the Orwellian test? ‘A patriot is an oppressive racist who is dangerous to the citizens of the United States.’ Yes, it is Orwellian.

PUBLIUS

President Obama says this is a “year of action”—and last night he made it very clear whose action he was talking about.

After noting recently that he has a pen and a phone and can use those to make changes without the help of Congress, Obama charged forward with promises of taking executive action wherever lawmakers fail to meet his demands.

“This President has acted like the playground bully who when he can’t have everything he wants, he decides to take his ball and go home,” Heritage President Jim DeMint said yesterday. “This is not the way our government is supposed to work.”

Indeed—Heritage’s legal experts have long questioned the legality of the President’s lone ranger style. And early analysis of this year’s State of the Union proposals indicates the executive branch will continue to run amok.

One of the most hyped features of the speech was Obama’s declaration that he will order a higher minimum wage for people working on federal contracts. These aren’t federal employees, but employees of companies that have contracts to do work for the federal government.

Heritage legal fellow Andrew Kloster said this isn’t something the President is supposed to be doing.

“Any contractor who is adversely affected by this action would have a good case to take to court,” Kloster said. “If it stands, though, this would be yet another unlawful unilateral action concocted by the Obama Administration.”

Why does Obama insist on bypassing Congress—the people Americans elected to make the laws?

DeMint notes:

President Obama and his apologists insist that ruling through executive action is the only option because we live in an exceptionally partisan age. Tell that to Ronald Reagan who worked with a Congress led by liberal Democrats, or Bill Clinton, who found ways to work with a Congress that had impeached him.

In addition to Obama’s new executive plans, America is still reeling from all the “action” he’s been driving the past few years. Heritage expert Diane Katz explained:

Hundreds of other costly edicts are in the pipeline, including dozens more Obamacare dictates and equally onerous Dodd-Frank rules. This President, after all, has consistently exploited executive orders and regulations to control manufacturing, finance, health care, and a slew of what most of us once thought were personal lifestyle choices. Indeed, this President’s accelerated rate of regulatory expansion appears unequaled, with more than $70 billion in new annual regulatory costs added in the first term alone.

Many regulatory changes appear quietly and stealthily in government notices—but Obama’s State of the Union shows that he plans to wield his pen proudly this year.

Posted on The Heritage Foundation site

Here are a few facts to bear in mind when we’re all regaled by the president about Obama’s ‘historic’ presidency at his State of the Union address:

1. The Number Of Americans That Have Joined The Food Stamp Program Since Obama Took Office: 19.4 Million.
2. The Number Of People Unemployed At The End Of Obama’s Fifth Year As President: 10.4 Million.
3. The Number Of People Working Part-Time That Would Like To Work Full-Time: 7.8 Million.
4. The Number Of People That Have Entered Poverty Since 2008: 6.7 Million.
5. Americans Who Received Cancellation Notices For Their Health Plans Due To ObamaCare After Obama Promised They Could Keep Their Plans In His 2010 State Of The Union Address: 5 Million.
6. The Number Of Americans Struggling With Long-Term Unemployment Of 27 Weeks Or Over: 3.9 Million.
7. The Increase In Americans Struggling With Long-Term Unemployment Since Obama Became President: 1.2 Million.
8. Construction Jobs (aka “Shovel-Ready Jobs”) Lost Since Obama Took Office: 721,000.
9. Manufacturing Jobs Lost Since Obama Took Office: 528,000.
10. The Number Of People That Left The Labor Force In December: 347,000.
11. The Debt Per Capita For Americans At The End Of 2013: $54,688.
12. Average Student Debt For A College Graduate: $29,400
13. The Increase In Debt Per Capita For Americans Since Obama Took Office: $19,661
14. The Decline In Median House Hold Income Since Obama Became President: $3,827.
15. Increase In Family Health Care Premiums Under Obama, Despite His Claim That ObamaCare Would Reduce Premiums During His 2010 State Of The Union Address (Subsidies Being Irrelevant): $3,671.
16. The Last Time The Labor Force Participation Rate Was At Its Current level: 1978.
17. Increase In The Average Price Per Gallon Of Gas Since Obama Took Office: 79%.
18. The Percent Of Unemployed That Are 18-34 Year Olds: 46%.
19. Average Number Of Weeks Someone Will Be Unemployed: 37.
20. Poverty Rate In 2012 – An Increase From 13.2 Percent The Year Before Obama Became President: 15%.
21. The Number Of Times Obama Has Pivoted To The Economy: 14.
22. The Number of New Ideas Expected From Obama’s 2014 State Of The Union Address: 0.

These are just some of the “fun facts” that come via RNC research, and they are based on government and third-party figures.

Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack 0bama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, the result of a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages. How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world’s largest economy, direct the world’s most powerful military, execute the world’s most consequential job?

Imagine a future historian examining 0bama’s pre-presidential life: ushered into and through the Ivy League, despite unremarkable grades and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a “community organizer;” a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, less often did he vote “present”); and finally an unaccomplished single term in the United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his presidential ambitions.

He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signature legislation as a legislator. And then there is the matter of his troubling associations: the white-hating, America-loathing preacher who for decades served as 0bama’s “spiritual mentor;” a real-life, actual terrorist who served as 0bama’s colleague and political sponsor. It is easy to imagine a future historian looking at it all and asking: How on Earth was such a man elected president?

Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal: “To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers, would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. 0bama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were ‘a bit’ extreme, he was given a pass. Let that sink in: 0bama was given a pass – held to a lower standard because of the color of his skin.”

Podhoretz continues: “And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also so articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) “non-threatening,” all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?”

Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of the Obama phenomenon – affirmative action. Not in the legal sense, of course. But certainly in the motivating sentiment behind all affirmative action laws and regulations, which are designed primarily to make white people, and especially white liberals, feel good about themselves.

Unfortunately, minorities often suffer so that whites can pat themselves on the back. Liberals routinely admit minorities to schools for which they are not qualified, yet take no responsibility for the inevitable poor performance and high drop-out rates which follow. Liberals don’t care if these minority students fail; liberals aren’t around to witness the emotional devastation and deflated self-esteem resulting from the racist policy that is affirmative action. Yes, racist. Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the color of his skin – that’s affirmative action in a nutshell, and if that isn’t racism, then nothing is.

And that is what America did to 0bama. True, Obama himself was never troubled by his lack of achievements, but why would he be? As many have noted, Obama was told he was good enough for Columbia despite undistinguished grades at Occidental; he was told he was good enough for the US Senate despite a mediocre record in Illinois; he was told he was good enough to be president despite no record at all in the Senate. All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was good enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary.

What could this breed if not the sort of empty narcissism on display every time Obama speaks? In 2008, many who agreed that he lacked executive qualifications nonetheless raved about Obama’s oratory skills, intellect, and cool character. Those people – conservatives included – ought now to be deeply embarrassed.

The man thinks and speaks in the hoariest of clichés, and that’s when he has his teleprompters in front of him; when the prompter is absent he can barely think or speak at all. Not one original idea has ever issued from his mouth – it’s all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that has failed over and over again for 100 years. (An example is his 2012 campaign speeches which are almost word for word his 2008 speeches)

And what about his character? Obama is constantly blaming anything and everything else for his troubles. Bush did it; it was bad luck; I inherited this mess. Remember, he wanted the job, campaigned for the task. It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise his own powerlessness, so comfortable with his own incompetence. (The other day he actually came out and said no one could have done anything to get our economy and country back on track). But really, what were we to expect? The man has never been responsible for anything, so how do we expect him to act responsibly?

In short: our president is a small-minded man, with neither the temperament nor the intellect to handle his job. When you understand that, and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of liberty and prosperity make sense. It could not have gone otherwise with such an impostor in the Oval Office.

By Matt Patterson (Newsweek Columnist – Opinion Writer)

LOS ANGELES — In a famously left-leaning Hollywood, where Democratic fund-raisers fill the social calendar, Friends of Abe stands out as a conservative group that bucks the prevailing political winds.

A collection of perhaps 1,500 right-leaning players in the entertainment industry, Friends of Abe keeps a low profile and fiercely protects its membership list, to avoid what it presumes would result in a sort of 21st-century blacklist, albeit on the other side of the partisan spectrum.

Now the Internal Revenue Service is reviewing the group’s activities in connection with its application for tax-exempt status. Last week, federal tax authorities presented the group with a 10-point request for detailed information about its meetings with politicians like Paul D. Ryan, Thaddeus McCotter and Herman Cain, among other matters, according to people briefed on the inquiry.

The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the organization’s confidentiality strictures, and to avoid complicating discussions with the I.R.S.

Those people said that the application had been under review for roughly two years, and had at one point included a demand — which was not met — for enhanced access to the group’s security-protected website, which would have revealed member names. Tax experts said that an organization’s membership list is information that would not typically be required. The I.R.S. already had access to the site’s basic levels, a request it considers routine for applications for 501(c)(3) nonprofit status.

The actors Gary Sinise, right, and Jon Voight, left, are among the few whose affiliation with Friends of Abe is public knowledge.

Friends of Abe — the name refers to Abraham Lincoln — has strongly discouraged the naming of its members. That policy even prohibits the use of cameras at group events, to avoid the unwilling identification of all but a few associates — the actors Gary Sinise, Jon Voight and Kelsey Grammer, or the writer-producer Lionel Chetwynd, for instance — who have spoken openly about their conservative political views.

The I.R.S. request comes in the face of a continuing congressional investigation into the agency’s reviews of political nonprofits, most of them conservative-leaning, which provoked outrage on the right and forced the departure last year of several high-ranking I.R.S. officials. But unlike most of those groups, which had sought I.R.S. approval for a mix of election campaigning and nonpartisan issue advocacy, Friends of Abe is seeking a far more restrictive tax status, known as 501(c)(3), that would let donors claim a tax deduction, but strictly prohibits any form of partisan activity.

The group is not currently designated tax-exempt, but it behaves as a nonprofit and has almost no formal structure, people briefed on the matter said. The I.R.S. review will determine whether Friends of Abe receives tax-exempt status that would provide legal footing similar to that of the People for the American Way Foundation, a progressive group fostered by the television producer Norman Lear and others. If not, Friends of Abe could resort to the courts, or it might simply operate as a nonprofit, but it would be unable to receive tax-deductible contributions.

Jeremy Boreing, executive director of Friends of Abe, declined on Wednesday to discuss details of the tax review, but said the group would continue regardless of outcome.

“Certainly, it’s been a long process,” he said.

“Friends of Abe has absolutely no political agenda,” he added. “It exists to create fellowship among like-minded individuals.”

People for the American Way, Mr. Lear’s group, stands as something of a liberal counterpart to Friends of Abe, though the organization is far larger, with an affiliate that spends millions of dollars a year on issue advocacy in Washington and beyond. But the entertainment industry has been crisscrossed by progressive groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council, which maintains a tax-exempt educational adjunct under the 501(c)(3) provision, and includes the producer Laurie David and the actor Leonardo DiCaprio among its trustees. Another, the American Foundation for Equal Rights, is a nonprofit that supports marriage rights for gay people and counts the producer Bruce Cohen and the writer Dustin Lance Black among its founders.

In the request last week, tax officials combined broad questions about membership criteria and social events, according to the people briefed on the matter, with pointed queries about meetings with a Los Angeles mayoral candidate, Kevin James, and Republican politicians like Mr. Ryan, Mr. Cain and Rick Santorum.

Officials particularly wanted to know why a speech introducing Mr. Cain at a Friends of Abe event in November 2011 — when he was a presidential candidate — should not be regarded as potentially prohibited political campaign support.

While tax-exempt groups are permitted to invite candidates to speak at events, it is not uncommon for the I.R.S. to scrutinize such activities to determine whether they cross the line into partisan election activity. One issue is whether the organization invites all the qualified candidates.

“The I.R.S. would say that if you are inviting only conservative candidates, that’s a problem,” said Marcus S. Owens, a former director of the I.R.S.’s exempt organizations division. “But it’s never really been litigated.”

Ofer Lion, a lawyer representing Friends of Abe in its application for tax-exempt status, declined to comment.

Friends of Abe began about nine years ago as little more than an email chain linking conservative stars, filmmakers and other Hollywood figures who were generally reluctant to openly discuss their views. The name is a take on Friends of Bill, the circle of loyalists who have adhered to Bill Clinton over the years.

Mr. Sinise was a leading voice among those who in early 2005 gathered at Morton’s Steakhouse here for an informal dinner that members have since identified as the group’s closest approach to an actual founding moment.

As Friends of Abe grew, however, Mr. Sinise withdrew from active leadership, and Mr. Boreing, a film producer and director, took charge.

Membership has been defined mostly by access to a private website (there are no dues, but enhanced online access requires a small fee), and attendance at a growing number of events that have included meetings with political operatives like Karl Rove and Frank Luntz; politicians like Michele Bachmann and John Boehner; and media figures like Ann Coulter, Dennis Miller and Mark Levin.

The recent I.R.S. query did not mention the earlier request for access to the names of members, people briefed on the query said.

But a remaining question is whether at least some of the group’s politically oriented encounters will be interpreted as campaign activity, and weigh against its bid for tax exemption as a 501(c)(3) organization, devoted to educational or charitable work.

A spokesman for the I.R.S. on Wednesday said it was prohibited from commenting on specific taxpayer activity.

Tax officials and congressional overseers have been embroiled in a debate over the enforcement of rules that restrict campaign activity by tax-exempt groups since last year, when an I.R.S. official acknowledged that officers had improperly targeted Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny. But most of those groups were seeking recognition as so-called 501(c)(4) groups, whose ability to conduct a limited amount of campaign activity is governed by a vague patchwork of rules and standards. In November, in an effort to make the process both more transparent and more rigorous, the I.R.S. announced that it would begin formulating new rules.

The conservative filmmaker behind a hit anti-Obama documentary was indicted Thursday night on charges he violated federal campaign laws, in what a close colleague is calling a “selective prosecution.”

Dinesh D’Souza, whose “2016: Obama’s America” is the second-highest grossing political documentary of all time, will appear in U.S. District Court in New York Friday.

The indictment states the 52-year-old best-selling author and activist will be charged with one count of illegally donating to a Senate campaign and one count of causing false statements to be made to authorities in connection with the contributions.

FoxNews.com has confirmed that the donation in question was made to Republican Wendy Long, who lost a 2012 Senate bid against New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.

D’Souza is accused of directing various donors to give contributions to Long’s campaign totaling $20,000, and then reimbursing them. Individuals are only allowed to donate a maximum of $5,000 to a candidate per election cycle.

“Trying to influence elections through bogus campaign contributions is a serious crime,” George Venizelos, the assistant director in charge of the New York FBI office said in a statement.  “Today, Mr. D’Souza finds himself on the wrong side of the law.”

DINESH D’SOUZA interviews Obama’s brother in Africa

D’Souza’s co-producer in “2016” Gerald Molen told FoxNews.com he believes D’Souza is being singled out by federal authorities.

The 2012 film examined President Obama’s past and early influences that may have shaped his political ideology and was a surprise hit, making over $33 million at the box office.

The duo is teaming up again for a new film “America,” which Molen said will be released on schedule in July 2014 regardless of what happens in the case.

“Neither the filmmakers nor the American public can allow this prosecution to deter us from the film’s release, and I am calling upon the American people to show their elected officials that this kind of selective prosecution will not stand, by joining us at the box office,” Molen said. “I look forward to my good friend Dinesh being vindicated for what appears to be nothing more than a misunderstanding.”

Molen, who won an Oscar as a co-producer for “Schindler’s List” said the charges against D’Souza deeply disappoint him, as D’Souza is a “great American.”

The indictment states the alleged illegal contributions came to light during the FBI’s routine examination of campaign contributions  filed with the FEC during the 2012 election year.

D’Souza faces a maximum of two years in prison for the illegal contributions charge and a maximum of five years in prison for the false statements charge.

The indictment was announced by Venizelos and U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who was appointed by President Obama in 2009.

A record high number of voters now oppose the 2010 Affordable Care Act and a record low number supports it, according to the latest Fox News poll.

In addition, a majority thinks the new law will increase their health care costs, while few think it will improve their quality of care.

The new poll finds 59 percent of voters oppose the health care law, up from 55 percent who opposed it six months ago (June 2013).  The increase in opposition comes from both independents and Democrats.

Nearly a third of Democrats — 30 percent — oppose the law, up from 22 percent in June.

Opposition among independents went from 53 percent to 64 percent today.

Overall, 36 percent of voters favor the new health care law.  That’s down from 40 percent in June and marks a new low.

Sixty-four percent of Democrats, 29 percent of independents and 11 percent of Republicans like the law.

Enrollment in the Obama health care exchanges began October 1 and the requirement to have qualifying coverage started January 1.

Some apparent reasons for opposition to the law include the fact that majorities think the new law will increase their taxes (63 percent), increase their insurance costs (62 percent) and increase the federal deficit (56 percent).

Meanwhile, just one voter in five thinks Obamacare will increase the quality of their health care (19 percent).  More than twice as many expect the quality of their care to get worse (39 percent) and another 37percent think it will stay the same.

By a 44-36 percent margin, voters think the quality of health care for all Americans will decrease rather than increase as a result of the new law.

Voters disapprove of the job President Obama is doing on health care by a 59-38 percent margin.

His highest rating on health care was 48 percent approval in September 2012, while his lowest was 36 percent in November 2013.

Some lawmakers are questioning the security of the health care exchanges and raise the possibility of identity theft for participants.  The new poll finds 60 percent of voters lack confidence in the website’s ability to keep their information private.  Thirty-seven percent are at least somewhat confident, including nine percent who are “very” confident.

The Fox News poll is based on landline and cell phone interviews with 1,010 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from January 19-21, 2014.  The full poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

  By Dana Blanton / Published January 23, 2014 / FoxNews.com

Mark Levin opened his show today livid over Obama’s announcement that he will ignore the legislature and use his pen to write executive orders. He says the separation of powers are the key to our Republic and yet today Obama just announced that he would assume lawmaking powers via executive orders.

Mark Levin says what’s going on here is that we are witnessing a gradual, quiet coup:

He’s just announced that he is going to assume lawmaking powers. He does not recognize the majority in the House of Representatives. I don’t know how much more clearly he can say it. You know what this is folks? This is a gradual, quiet coup. That’s what is taking place. It’s gradual. It’s quiet, in the sense that it’s non-violent. But it’s a coup!

Listen to the entire segment below:

Minutes after the American consulate in Benghazi came under assault on Sept. 11, 2012, the nation’s top civilian and uniformed defense officials — headed for a previously scheduled Oval Office session with President Obama — were informed that the event was a “terrorist attack,” declassified documents show. The new evidence raises the question of why the top military men, one of whom was a member of the president’s Cabinet, allowed him and other senior Obama administration officials to press a false narrative of the Benghazi attacks for two weeks afterward.

Gen. Carter Ham, who at the time was head of AFRICOM, the Defense Department combatant command with jurisdiction over Libya, told the House in classified testimony last year that it was him who broke the news about the unfolding situation in Benghazi to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The tense briefing — in which it was already known that U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens had been targeted and had gone missing — occurred just before the two senior officials departed the Pentagon for their session with the commander in chief.

According to declassified testimony obtained by Fox News, Ham — who was working out of his Pentagon office on the afternoon of Sept. 11 — said he learned about the assault on the consulate compound within 15 minutes of its commencement, at 9:42 p.m. Libya time, through a call he received from the AFRICOM Command Center.

“My first call was to General Dempsey, General Dempsey’s office, to say, ‘Hey, I am headed down the hall. I need to see him right away,'” Ham told lawmakers on the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation on June 26 of last year. “I told him what I knew. We immediately walked upstairs to meet with Secretary Panetta.”

Ham’s account of that fateful day was included in some 450 pages of testimony given by senior Pentagon officials in classified, closed-door hearings conducted last year by the Armed Services subcommittee. The testimony, given under “Top Secret” clearance and only declassified this month, presents a rare glimpse into how information during a crisis travels at the top echelons of America’s national security apparatus, all the way up to the president.

Also among those whose secret testimony was declassified was Dempsey, the first person Ham briefed about Benghazi. Ham told lawmakers he considered it a fortuitous “happenstance” that he was able to rope Dempsey and Panetta into one meeting, so that, as Ham put it, “they had the basic information as they headed across for the meeting at the White House.” Ham also told lawmakers he met with Panetta and Dempsey when they returned from their 30-minute session with President Obama on Sept. 11.

Armed Services Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., sitting in on the subcommittee’s hearing with Ham last June, reserved for himself an especially sensitive line of questioning: namely, whether senior Obama administration officials, in the very earliest stages of their knowledge of Benghazi, had any reason to believe that the assault grew spontaneously out of a demonstration over an anti-Islam video produced in America.

Numerous aides to the president and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeatedly told the public in the weeks following the murder of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans that night — as Obama’s hotly contested bid for re-election was entering its final stretch — that there was no evidence the killings were the result of a premeditated terrorist attack, but rather were the result of a protest gone awry. Subsequent disclosures exposed the falsity of that narrative, and the Obama administration ultimately acknowledged that its early statements on Benghazi were untrue.

“In your discussions with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta,” McKeon asked, “was there any mention of a demonstration or was all discussion about an attack?” Ham initially testified that there was some “peripheral” discussion of this subject, but added “at that initial meeting, we knew that a U.S. facility had been attacked and was under attack, and we knew at that point that we had two individuals, Ambassador Stevens and Mr. [Sean] Smith, unaccounted for.”

Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, a first-term lawmaker with experience as an Iraq war veteran and Army reserve officer, pressed Ham further on the point, prodding the 29-year Army veteran to admit that “the nature of the conversation” he had with Panetta and Dempsey was that “this was a terrorist attack.”

The transcript reads as follows:

WENSTRUP: “As a military person, I am concerned that someone in the military would be advising that this was a demonstration. I would hope that our military leadership would be advising that this was a terrorist attack.”

HAM: “Again, sir, I think, you know, there was some preliminary discussion about, you know, maybe there was a demonstration. But I think at the command, I personally and I think the command very quickly got to the point that this was not a demonstration, this was a terrorist attack.”

WENSTRUP: “And you would have advised as such if asked. Would that be correct?”

HAM: “Well, and with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta, that is the nature of the conversation we had, yes, sir.”

Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee in February of last year that it was him who informed the president that “there was an apparent attack going on in Benghazi.” “Secretary Panetta, do you believe that unequivocally at that time we knew that this was a terrorist attack?” asked Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla. “There was no question in my mind that this was a terrorist attack,” Panetta replied.

Senior State Department officials who were in direct, real-time contact with the Americans under assault in Benghazi have also made clear they, too, knew immediately — from surveillance video and eyewitness accounts — that the incident was a terrorist attack. After providing the first substantive “tick-tock” of the events in Benghazi, during a background briefing conducted on the evening of Oct. 9, 2012, a reporter asked two top aides to then-Secretary Clinton: “What in all of these events that you’ve described led officials to believe for the first several days that this was prompted by protests against the video?”

“That is a question that you would have to ask others,” replied one of the senior officials. “That was not our conclusion.”

Ham’s declassified testimony further underscores that Obama’s earliest briefing on Benghazi was solely to the effect that the incident was a terrorist attack, and raises once again the question of how the narrative about the offensive video, and a demonstration that never occurred, took root within the White House as the explanation for Benghazi.

The day after the attacks, which marked the first killing of an American ambassador in the line of duty since 1979, Obama strode to the Rose Garden to comment on the loss, taking pains in his statement to say: “We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others.” As late as Sept. 24, during an appearance on the talk show “The View,” when asked directly by co-host Joy Behar if Benghazi had been “an act of terrorism,” the president hedged, saying: “Well, we’re still doing an investigation.”

The declassified transcripts show that beyond Ham, Panetta and Dempsey, other key officers and channels throughout the Pentagon and its combatant commands were similarly quick to label the incident a terrorist attack. In a classified session on July 31 of last year, Westrup raised the question with Marine Corps Col. George Bristol, commander of AFRICOM’s Joint Special Operations Task Force for the Trans Sahara region.

Bristol, who was traveling in Dakar, Senegal when the attack occurred, said he received a call from the Joint Operations Center alerting him to “a considerable event unfolding in Libya.” Bristol’s next call was to Lt. Col. S.E. Gibson, an Army commander stationed in Tripoli. Gibson informed Bristol that Stevens was missing, and that “there was a fight going on” at the consulate compound.

WESTRUP: “So no one from the military was ever advising, that you are aware of, that this was a demonstration gone out of control, it was always considered an attack -“

BRISTOL: “Yes, sir.”

WENSTRUP: “– on the United States?”

BRISTOL: “Yes, sir. … We referred to it as the attack.”

Staffers on the Armed Services subcommittee conducted nine classified sessions on the Benghazi attacks, and are close to issuing what they call an “interim” report on the affair. Fox News reported in October their preliminary conclusion that U.S. forces on the night of the Benghazi attacks were postured in such a way as to make military rescue or intervention impossible — a finding that buttresses the claims of Dempsey and other senior Pentagon officials.

While their investigation continues, staffers say they still want to question Panetta directly. But the former defense secretary, now retired, has resisted such calls for additional testimony.

“He is in the president’s Cabinet,” said Rep. Martha Roby R-Ala., chair of the panel that collected the testimony, of Panetta. “The American people deserve the truth. They deserve to know what’s going on, and I honestly think that that’s why you have seen — beyond the tragedy that there was a loss of four Americans’ lives — is that  the American people feel misled.”

“Leon Panetta should have spoken up,” agreed Kim R. Holmes, a former assistant secretary of state under President George W. Bush and now a distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “The people at the Pentagon and frankly, the people at the CIA stood back while all of this was unfolding and allowed this narrative to go on longer than they should have.”

Neither Panetta’s office nor the White House responded to Fox News’ requests for comment.

By James Rosen

On Monday, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia slammed President Barack Obama’s interpretation of the U.S. Constitution during oral arguments over Recess appointments.

The case, National Labor Relations Board vs. Noel Canning, is over whether the president acted legally when he made a series of temporary appointments to the National Labor Relations Board while the Senate was not conducting business  but still gavelling in and out every day.

Clause three of the Constitution’s section on presidential powers states that, “The president shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session.”

At issue is if the president acted in poor faith by saying the Senate was not in session. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli argued that the Constitution is ambiguous on the subject.

“It’s been assumed to be ambiguous by self-interested presidents,” Scalia replied. After Scalia’s retort, the court room was filled with “oohs” and laughter, Talking Points Memo reports.

Since the National Labor Relations Board conflict, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has broken centuries of tradition by allowing Senate approval for appointments by majority vote, thereby making the case less consequential to Senate procedure.

But if the Supreme Court rules against the White House, the board’s executive actions will no longer be valid.

By Christopher Bedford

With media attention focused on Chris Christie and Bridgegate, it was easy to miss a more important Washington story last week. The other shoe dropped on the Obama presidency.

Still battered at home by the ObamaCare debacle and the permanently sluggish economy, the last thing the White House wanted was bad news on foreign policy. But that’s exactly what it got, and then some, thanks to the shockingly scathing book by Robert Gates.

The former defense secretary offers the most devastating critique to come from an Obama insider. He paints the president as estranged from the very Afghan military surge he ordered and suspicious of and hostile toward top leaders of the armed forces.

Gates is especially critical of Vice President Joe Biden, writing that he has been “wrong on nearly every major foreign-policy and national-security issue over the past four decades.”

He blames Biden and others for leading Obama to believe that military leaders were giving the president “the bum’s rush” in seeking more troops in Afghanistan in 2009, according to excerpts.

“Suspicion and distrust of senior military officers by senior White House officials — including the president and vice president — became a big problem for me,” Gates writes.

Hillary Rodham Clinton also comes off as a craven politician, with Gates saying he witnessed Clinton confess to Obama that she opposed the 2007 Iraq surge because she thought it would help her 2008 presidential campaign.

The book, set for release this week, carries extra sting because Gates is a widely respected team player who served presidents from both parties. The former head of the CIA, he led the Pentagon under George W. Bush and Obama.

His status as a kind of one-man blue-ribbon panel makes it impossible to refute his charges. The result is that the existing image of Obama as incompetent on domestic policies is now twinned with one of incompetence abroad. And those views are rapidly hardening into fixed conventional wisdom.

The implications are enormous for the three years left in his term. “It makes him even more of a lame duck,” says Ed Rollins, a GOP wise man . He says Obama, whose approval number is stuck at about 40 percent, won’t be welcome to campaign for most Democrats during this year’s election.

“Most will say, ‘Thanks but no thanks, just send the money,’ ” Rollins adds.

And Obama’s lack of commitment to the war on terror is something our enemies already figured out and are exploiting.

Longtime al Qaeda expert Peter Bergen pulls together disturbing developments previously reported only in piecemeal fashion. “From around Aleppo in western Syria to small areas of Falluja in central Iraq, al Qaeda now controls territory that stretches more than 400 miles across the heart of the Middle East,” Bergen writes for CNN, and adds, “Al Qaeda appears to control more territory in the Arab world than it has done at any time in its history.”

Others note that borders are being erased as terror groups carve out safe havens in several countries. Even The New York Times took a rare break from its propaganda approach to Obama, seeing a “power vacuum” and “a post-American Middle East in which no broker has the power, or the will, to contain the region’s sectarian hatreds.”

It later added a frightening note, reporting that intelligence officials say Syrian Islamists are trying to recruit Americans to carry out terror attacks here.

This “parade of horribles” largely reflects a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia for Muslim supremacy that is spreading because Obama has abdicated global leadership. Adding a nuclear-armed Iran to the dangerous mix is a terrifying prospect to many in the region.

But not to worry, the administration is on the case. Secretary of State John Kerry paid his 10th visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories in a frantic, and relatively pointless, effort to get a peace treaty.

And President Obama returned from his 17-day, $4 million vacation in Hawaii and promptly denounced income inequality. On Friday, the Justice Department said it would recognize gay marriage in Utah, even though the state doesn’t.

And the band played on.

By Michael Goodwin

WASHINGTON –  Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in his upcoming memoir, has harsh words for President Obama’s leadership style and commitment to the Afghanistan war, accusing the president of losing faith in his own strategy.

“For him, it’s all about getting out,” he wrote.

The tone of Gates’ book is a break from Washington decorum, in which former Cabinet members rarely level tough judgments against sitting presidents.

Gates writes that by early 2010 he had concluded the president “doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his.”

The book, “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War,” is scheduled for a Jan. 14 release by the Knopf DoubleDay Publishing Group. Excerpts, confirmed by Fox News, were first reported by The Washington Post and New York Times.

The 70-year-old Gates writes that Obama appeared to doubt his own strategy in Afghanistan to the point of being “outright convinced it would fail.”

Obama deployed 30,000 more troops to stabilize Afghanistan before starting to remove soldiers in mid-2011, after months of tense discussion with Gates and other top advisers.

Gates said he never doubted Obama’s support for the troops, “only his support for their mission.”

In an essay Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal apparently to promote the book, Gates also writes that Obama’s “fundamental problem in Afghanistan was that his political and philosophical preferences for winding down the U.S. role conflicted with his own pro-war public rhetoric … the nearly unanimous recommendations of his senior civilian and military advisers at the departments of State and Defense, and the realities on the ground.”

Gates, a carryover from the Bush administration who worked for every president since Nixon, except Clinton, said that underneath his notoriously calm exterior he was frequently “seething” because he felt Obama and his team had neither trust nor confidence in him.

Despite his criticism of Obama, Gates writes about the commander in chief’s primary Afghanistan polices: “I believe Obama was right in each of these decisions.”

And he writes approvingly about Obama in several other passages, calling him “a man of personal integrity.”

He admits to having “a few issues” with George W. Bush and essentially wrote approvingly of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom he described as being “smart, idealistic but pragmatic, tough-minded, indefatigable, funny, a very valuable colleague, and a superb representative of the United States all over the world.”

However, Gates, who also worked at the CIA and National Security Council, is largely critical of Vice President Joe Biden, accusing him of “poisoning the well” for military leadership.

At the White House, National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said in response to the book, “The president welcomes differences of view among his national security team, which broaden his options and enhance our policies.

“The president disagrees with Secretary Gates’ assessment — from his leadership on the Balkans in the Senate, to his efforts to end the war in Iraq, Joe Biden has been one of the leading statesmen of his time, and has helped advance America’s leadership in the world.”