President Obama acknowledged Sunday that U.S. intelligence officials “underestimated” the threat posed by the Islamic State and overestimated the Iraqi army’s capacity to defeat the militant group.

The president said in an wide-ranging interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” that the Islamic State militants went “underground” after being squashed in Iraq and regrouped amid the Syrian civil war.

“During the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you have huge swaths of the country that are completely ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves and take advantage of that chaos,” Obama said.

The president said his director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has acknowledged that the U.S. “underestimated what had been taking place in Syria.” He also said it was “absolutely true” that the U.S. overestimated the ability and will of the Iraqi army.

Obama also acknowledged that the U.S. is dealing with a conundrum in Syria, as the U.S.-led military campaign against the Islamic State is helping Syrian President Bashar Assad, who the U.N. has accused of war crimes.

“I recognize the contradiction in a contradictory land and a contradictory circumstance,” Obama said.”We are not going to stabilize Syria under the rule of Assad.”

However, Obama called the threat from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and other terror groups a more “immediate concern that has to be dealt with.”

“On the other hand, in terms of immediate threats to the United States, ISIL, Khorasan Group — those folks could kill Americans,” he said.

In terms of Iraq, Obama said the U.S. left the country after the war with “a democracy that was intact, a military that was well-equipped and the ability then (for Iraqis) to chart their own course.”

However, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki “squandered” that opportunity over roughly five years because he was “much more interested in consolidating his Shia base and very suspicious of the Sunnis and the Kurds, who make up the other two thirds of the country,” the president said.

Obama said military force is necessary to shrink the Islamic State’s capacity, cut off financing and eliminate the flow of foreign fighters. He said political solutions are also needed that accommodate both Sunnis and Shiites, adding that conflicts between the two sects are the biggest cause of conflict throughout the world.

However, Obama made clear he has no interest in a major U.S. ground presence beyond the 1,600 American advisers and special operations troops he already has ordered to Iraq. When asked if the current conflict was not really a war, Obama said there are clear distinctions between this campaign and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We are assisting Iraq in a very real battle that’s taking place on their soil, with their troops,” the president said. “This is not America against ISIL. This is America leading the international community to assist a country with whom we have a security partnership.”

Obama also discussed the midterm elections, U.S. relations with Russia and reviewed his six years as president.

Obama described his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin as “blunt,” saying Russia’s aggression in Ukraine is threatening progress made since the Cold War.

“I’ve always had a business-like relationship with (Putin)– and it’s blunt and it’s firm,” Obama said. “And what I’ve said from the outset is that Russian aggression, violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a smaller or weaker country, violates international norms and is contrary to all the progress that’s been made in creating a peaceful and prosperous Europe after World War II and then after the Cold War period.”

Obama also said he believes Democrats can maintain control of the Senate in November.

“I can put my record against any leader around the world in terms of digging ourselves out of a terrible, un– almost unprecedented financial crisis,” Obama said. “Ronald Reagan used to ask– the question, ‘Are you better off than you were four years ago?’ In this case, are you better off than you were in six? And the answer is, the country is definitely better off than we were when I came into office…”

FoxNew.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will announce today that he plans to resign his post in the Obama Administration.

Holder, a controversial player on the stage of Obama’s Administration since 2009, has weathered numerous White House scandals, and provided cover for an Administration that has selectively enforced federal law to benefit the Democratic party and its liberal agenda. Holder has been a central figure in the Administration’s attempts to encourage illegal immigration, voter fraud, and IRS and DOJ targeting of conservatives, and those it deems obstructive to its political agenda.

Holder says he will remain in his position until a successor can be found.

PUBLIUS

Previously unpublished correspondence between Hillary Clinton and the late left-wing organizer Saul Alinsky reveals new details about her relationship with the controversial Chicago activist and shed light on her early ideological development.

Clinton met with Alinsky several times in 1968 while writing a Wellesley college thesis about his theory of community organizing.

Clinton’s relationship with Alinsky, and her support for his philosophy, continued for several years after she entered Yale law school in 1969, two letters obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show.

The letters obtained by the Free Beacon are part of the archives for the Industrial Areas Foundation, a training center for community organizers founded by Alinsky, which are housed at the University of Texas at Austin.

The letters also suggest that Alinsky, who died in 1972, had a deeper influence on Clinton’s early political views than previously known.

A 23-year-old Hillary Clinton was living in Berkeley, California, in the summer of 1971. She was interning at the left-wing law firm Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, known for its radical politics and a client roster that included Black Panthers and other militants.

On July 8, 1971, Clinton reached out to Alinsky, then 62, in a letter sent via airmail, paid for with stamps featuring Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and marked “Personal.”

“Dear Saul,” she began. “When is that new book [Rules for Radicals] coming out–or has it come and I somehow missed the fulfillment of Revelation?”

“I have just had my one-thousandth conversation about Reveille [for Radicals] and need some new material to throw at people,” she added, a reference to Alinsky’s 1946 book on his theories of community organizing.

Clinton devoted just one paragraph in her memoir Living History to Alinsky, writing that she rejected a job offer from him in 1969 in favor of going to law school. She wrote that she wanted to follow a more conventional path.

However, in the 1971 letter, Clinton assured Alinsky that she had “survived law school, slightly bruised, with my belief in and zest for organizing intact.”

“The more I’ve seen of places like Yale Law School and the people who haunt them, the more convinced I am that we have the serious business and joy of much work ahead–if the commitment to a free and open society is ever going to mean more than eloquence and frustration,” wrote Clinton.

According to the letter, Clinton and Alinsky had kept in touch since she entered Yale. The 62-year-old radical had reached out to give her advice on campus activism.

“If I never thanked you for the encouraging words of last spring in the midst of the Yale-Cambodia madness, I do so now,” wrote Clinton, who had moderated a campus election to join an anti-war student strike.

She added that she missed their regular conversations, and asked if Alinsky would be able to meet her the next time he was in California.

“I am living in Berkeley and working in Oakland for the summer and would love to see you,” Clinton wrote. “Let me know if there is any chance of our getting together.”

Clinton’s letter reached Alinsky’s office while he was on an extended trip to Southeast Asia, where he was helping train community organizers in the Philippines.

But a response letter from Alinsky’s secretary suggests that the radical organizer had a deep fondness for Clinton as well.

“Since I know [Alinsky’s] feelings about you I took the liberty of opening your letter because I didn’t want something urgent to wait for two weeks,” Alinsky’s long-time secretary, Georgia Harper, wrote to Clinton in a July 13, 1971 letter. “And I’m glad I did.”

Harper told Clinton that Alinksy’s book Rules for Radicals had been released. She enclosed several reviews of the book.

“Mr. Alinsky will be in San Francisco, staying at the Hilton Inn at the airport on Monday and Tuesday, July 26 and 27,” Harper added. “I know he would like to have you call him so that if there is a chance in his schedule maybe you can get together.”

It is unclear whether the meeting occurred.

A self-proclaimed radical, Alinsky advocated guerilla tactics and civil disobedience to correct what he saw as an institutionalized power gap in poor communities. His philosophy divided the world into “haves”–middle class and wealthy people –and “have nots”–the poor. He took an ends-justify-the-means approach to power and wealth redistribution, and developed the theoretical basis of “community organizing.”

“The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power,” wrote Alinsky in his 1971 book. “Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”

Clinton’s connection to Alinsky has been the subject of speculation for decades. It became controversial when Wellsley College, by request of the Clinton White House, sealed her 1968 thesis from the public for years. Conservative lawyer Barbara Olson said Clinton had asked for the thesis to be sealed because it showed “the extent to which she internalized and assimilated the beliefs and methods of Saul Alinsky.” Clinton opponent turned Clinton defender David Brock referred to her as “Alinsky’s daughter” in 1996’s The Seduction of Hillary Rodham.

The paper was opened to the public in 2001. While the thesis is largely sympathetic to Alinsky, it is also critical of some of his tactics.

Clinton described the organizer as “a man of exceptional charm,” but also objected to some of the conflicts he provoked as “unrealistic,” noting that his model could be difficult for others to replicate.

“Many of the Alinsky-inspired poverty warriors could not (discounting political reasons) move beyond the cathartic first step of organizing groups ‘to oppose, complain, demonstrate, and boycott’ to developing and running a program,” she wrote.

The letters obtained by the Free Beacon suggest that Clinton experimented more with radical politics during her law school years than she has publicly acknowledged.

In Living History, she describes her views during that time as far more pragmatic than leftwing.

She “agreed with some of Alinsky’s ideas,” Clinton wrote in her first memoir, but the two had a “fundamental disagreement” over his anti-establishment tactics.

She described how this disagreement led to her parting ways with Alinsky in the summer before law school in 1969.

“He offered me the chance to work with him when I graduated from college, and he was disappointed that I decided instead to go to law school,” she wrote.

“Alinsky said I would be wasting my time, but my decision was an expression of my belief that the system could be changed from within.”

A request for comment from the Clinton team was not returned.

Originally posted at the Washington Free Beacon.

The letters between Clinton and Alinsky can be read here:

The Hillary Letters

Barack Hussein Obama is indeed president of the U.S. due only to the principle of Affirmative Action.

Obama is a man who possessed no qualification to be the president of the United States of America, or the leader of the free world. His only qualifications listed on his public resume were 1) Foreign Exchange Student?, 2) Law School “Professor”, 3) Community Organizer, 4) State Senator, and 5) freshman U.S. Senator. Each of these “qualifications” is the direct result of special treatment afforded “an articulate young black” man with political ambitions and connections to unsavory anti-American, leftist, underworld characters.

What do we mean by Foreign Exchange Student? In fact, Obama was unknown to his fellow Columbia classmates, and no one recalls seeing him in any classes he says he took at the university. A 2008 Wall Street Journal article cited a survey of 400 people who were Columbia students from 1981 to 1983 and found no one who remembered him. The only people who knew him as a child have said that he presented himself as a foreign exchange student.

On his book publicity bio (right –>) he says of himself: “. . . was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.” Our point here is not to suggest that Obama was actually born in Kenya, because the “birthers” have yet to prove their pet theory, it is to prove that Obama himself garnered special attention and favors as he was growing up through false claims like being “born in Kenya.”

Regarding Mr. Obama’s tenure as a Law School Professor, the man was never a professor, but merely collected a paycheck for having an office at the University of Chicago Law School. He lectured infrequently, in any capacity, and was rarely seen by anyone at the school.

Community Organizer is one of those catch-all terms, meaning that Obama was active in leftist political causes. By his own admissions in his multiple autobiographies, from his early youth Obama was influenced by friends of his parents and grandparents who were blatant communists and socialists. He was a drug user and dealer, and frequently attended anti-American rallies and strategy sessions throughout his formative years.

Obama was elected an Illinois State Senator in 1996, suddenly unopposed in the election, and took office in 1997, where he remained until 2004 when he ran for the U.S. Senate seat. As a state senator he was often a no-show, and learned to vote “present” instead of yea or nay, to avoid creating a track record.

As a U.S. Senator Obama voted as a straight leftist, but 143 days into his term launched his bid for the presidency, and stopped voting on most issues thereafter.

Obama’s resume is the lightest of any U.S. president, and lighter than most U.S. Senators, or even most House members. What qualified him to be the president of the United States? He was “given” opportunities by those who thought that it was time for a black American to get a chance in the White House, just as he was given opportunities for education at expensive universities based on a false narrative.

Contrast Obama with a true American patriot and qualified African American presidential candidate like Dr. Ben Carson, as one of several examples, who worked hard and overcame obstacles on his own, without affirmative action policies to give him an automatic pass to the front of every line, and you see two completely different men. Dr. Carson is a man of character, and has worked tirelessly to help others and to pioneer neurosurgery techniques, especially for children. That course leads to an understanding of economics, human nature and international relations that a drug dealing, anti-American dolt like Barack Hussein Obama will never fathom.

PUBLIUS

“Sometimes, you have to admit you’re wrong,” The Billings Gazette  said about its 2008 endorsement of Barack Obama. “And, we were wrong. We said that things couldn’t get much worse after the sub par presidency of George W. Bush,” the paper wrote in an apologetic editorial on Friday.

The Montana and Wyoming newspaper says that after endorsing the Democrat president in 2008, it now “has us yearning for the good ol’ days when we were at least winning battles in Iraq.”

The paper begins by stating that Obama has earned “every bit” of his “abysmal” approval ratings, referring to the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal polls that “show that Americans are giving Obama lower marks than in 2006 when Iraq was going poorly for Bush and a tepid response to Hurricane Katrina sunk Bush’s ratings.”

“Obama’s hope and change have left liberals and conservatives alike hoping for real change, not just more lofty rhetoric.”

The lengthy op-ed goes on to provide a detailed laundry list of Obama regime failures that have led to its change of heart, including its NSA spying, its attacks against American energy, the “civil war” in Iraq, the Bergdahl exchange that released five top terrorists, and the VA scandal. Mysteriously, the piece fails to mention the IRS scandal, in which Americans were targeted for their political beliefs, and the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, in which four Americans were left to die while the Obama and Clinton machines lied repeatedly about what caused the attacks.

Contrary to its promise to be the most transparent administration in history, the paper claims that the opposite has turned out to be true, stating the regime “has actually cracked down on journalists, spied on citizens and retaliated against those who leak information to the press.” The Obama administration has earned a reputation must worse than the “disgraced” president, Richard Nixon, who resigned rather than face likely impeachment.

“In fact, the Obama administration has become so opaque and difficult that it has earned the reputation of being far worse than Nixon, the disgraced president whose terrible clampdown of information led to federal law being changed for more transparency.”

After blasting Obamacare as being synonymous with the word “boondoggle,” The Gazette says that when combined with the multiple other massive self-imposed problems, its “a disturbing trend of incompetence and failure.”

By TPNN Staff

The White House and Pentagon acknowledged Friday that the U.S. “is at war” with the Islamic State — contradicting Secretary of State John Kerry and others who a day earlier refused to use that term, prompting criticism from lawmakers that the administration was downplaying the conflict.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest and Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby used almost identical language when pressed by reporters Friday whether or not the expanded military operation against the terrorist group is in fact a war.

“In the same way that the United States is at war with Al Qaeda and its affiliates … the United States is at war with ISIL,” Earnest said.

Kirby said “this is not the Iraq War” from a decade ago, “but make no mistake — we know we are at war with ISIL in the same way we are at war and continue to be at war with Al Qaeda and its affiliates.”

The comments are a sharp turnaround from how Kerry described the military operation on Thursday. In interviews with CNN and CBS News, Kerry described it as a “very significant” and “major counterterrorism operation.” He told CBS News that “war is the wrong terminology.”

His spokeswoman, Marie Harf, also said she would not “refer to our efforts” as part of the “war on terrorism.”

Kerry’s comments, though, stirred confusion on Capitol Hill, coming a day after President Obama announced plans to expand airstrikes in Iraq and authorize them in Syria, while dispatching hundreds more U.S. military personnel.

Obama called for a coalition of nations to ultimately “destroy” the growing terror network. Meanwhile, the CIA confirmed that its latest estimates show the Islamic State has as many as 31,500 fighters across Iraq and Syria. That’s close to the estimated size of the Taliban force in 2001.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and other lawmakers suggested Kerry’s comments did not square with Obama’s stated goal of defeating the vast terror network.

“It’s hard to find a response to that,” McCain told Fox News on Thursday night, when asked about Kerry’s comments. “Then what was the president talking about [Wednesday] night?”

Kerry wasn’t the only one having a hard time describing the mission on Thursday. National Security Adviser Susan Rice likewise told CNN on Thursday she wasn’t sure whether it should be called a war or a “sustained counterterrorism campaign.”

Senior State Department officials stressed to Fox News on Friday that Kerry’s comments were consistent with what other senior U.S. officials were saying at the time, and made clear that the secretary remains on the same page as the rest of the administration.

“This was a deliberate, administration-wide adjustment in language,” a senior State Department official told Fox News, “which Secretary Kerry would have also used today had he been asked.”

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said earlier Friday that the semantics over what to call the operation “weakens the mission.”

“Words matter,” McCaul said. He claimed the administration was being careful with its language because the terror group defies Obama’s “campaign narrative” about ending the war on terrorism and putting Al Qaeda on the run.

“ISIL clearly hasn’t gotten the memo that I think John Kerry did,” McCaul said.

But in the Pentagon and White House briefings Friday afternoon, it appeared the administration was backing off the earlier characterization.

Earnest clarified that the operation is not a case of the United States acting alone against the Islamic State, since the Islamic State, he said, is waging a war against the international community.

But he repeated that the U.S. is “at war” with ISIS as it is at war with Al Qaeda and its affiliates.

Fox News’ James Rosen contributed to this report. 

A prophetic warning from then-President George W. Bush before he left office about what would happen if the U.S. withdrew troops from Iraq too soon is getting new attention in light of the Islamic State’s gains, as each of his predictions appears to be coming true.

Bush, as discussed on “The Kelly File,” made the remarks in the White House briefing room on July 12, 2007, as he argued against those who sought an immediate troop withdrawal.

“To begin withdrawing before our commanders tell us we are ready would be dangerous for Iraq, for the region and for the United States,” Bush cautioned.

He then ticked off a string of predictions about what would happen if the U.S. left too early.

“It would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to Al Qaeda.

“It would mean that we’d be risking mass killings on a horrific scale.

“It would mean we allow the terrorists to establish a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they lost in Afghanistan.

“It would mean we’d be increasing the probability that American troops would have to return at some later date to confront an enemy that is even more dangerous.”

Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen says all these predictions have come true.

“Every single thing that President Bush said there in that statement is happening today,” he told Fox News.

To Bush’s first warning, the Islamic State terror group is effectively the successor to Al Qaeda in Iraq – and they’ve overrun several major cities in Iraq’s north while claiming broad swaths of territory in Syria. Further, the group has been behind mass killings of Iraqi civilians as well as the recent execution by beheading of two American journalists.

The Obama administration has warned that the group’s violence threatens to approach genocide levels.

Though President Obama says combat troops will not be returning to fight in Iraq, American troops are nevertheless returning in some capacity. The president on Wednesday announced an expanded airstrike campaign against the group in Iraq and Syria, and is sending hundreds more U.S. military personnel into Iraq.

Some lawmakers and analysts say this could have been avoided if the Obama administration had left a residual force in Iraq, or at least had responded sooner to ISIS’ gains in northern Iraq over the past year.

Bush, before he left office, signed an agreement setting the stage for U.S. troops to withdraw by December 2011.

Obama, though, was urged by military advisers to keep thousands of service members after that deadline to help the shaky Iraqi government. But when Washington and Baghdad were unable to reach a renewed agreement governing the presence of U.S. forces in the country, the Obama administration withdrew virtually all troops at the end of 2011.

“We needed to leave a stabilizing force behind, and we didn’t.  And of course, we know the rest is history,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told Fox News.

1. If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for being in the country illegally, you live in a country run by idiots.

2. If you have to get your parents’ permission to go on a field trip or take an aspirin in school, but not to get an abortion, you live in a country run by idiots.

3. If you have to show identification to board an airplane, cash a check, buy liquor or check out a library book, but not to vote on who runs the government, you live in a country run by idiots.

4. If the government wants to ban stable, law-abiding citizens from owning gun magazines with more than ten rounds, but gives 20 F-16 fighter jets to the crazy leaders in Egypt, you live in a country run by idiots.

5. If, in the largest city, you can buy two 16-ounce sodas, but not a 24-ounce soda because 24-ounces of a sugary drink might make you fat, you live in a country run by idiots.

6. If an 80-year-old woman can be stripped searched by the TSA but a woman in a hijab is only subject to having her neck and head searched, you live in a country run by idiots.

7. If your government believes that the best way to eradicate trillions of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more, you live in a country run by idiots.

8. If a seven year old boy can be thrown out of grade school for saying his teacher’s “cute,” but hosting a sexual exploration or diversity class in grade school is perfectly acceptable, you live in a country run by idiots.

9. If hard work and success are met with higher taxes and more government intrusion, while not working is rewarded with EBT cards, WIC checks, Medicaid, subsidized housing and free cell phones, you live in a country run by idiots.

10. If the government’s plan for getting people back to work is to incentivize NOT working, with 99 weeks of unemployment checks and no requirement to prove they applied but can’t find work, you live in a country run by idiots.

11. If being stripped of the ability to defend yourself makes you more “safe” according to the government, you live in a country run by idiots.

Junius P. Long is said to be the original author of this “Food For Thought” essay that runs through a simply yet startling list of situations that prove there are some leadership issues in this country.

Warnings of a massive economic collapse, government stockpiling of weaponry, and the idea that Americans could be broadly classified as terrorists and then detained indefinitely or killed often fell upon deaf ears.

Today, as more information ‘leaks’ into the mainstream, it is no longer just conspiracy theory. We now have some of the most influential journalists and commentators in the country alerting Americans to the possibility that everything the government has been preparing for the last several years may soon be realized.

I’m going to tell you what I think is going on.

I don’t think domestic insurrection. Law enforcement and national security agencies, they play out multiple scenarios. They simulate multiple scenarios.

I’ll tell you what I think they’re simulating.

The collapse of our financial system, the collapse of our society and the potential for widespread violence, looting, killing in the streets, because that’s what happens when an economy collapses.

I’m not talking about a recession. I’m talking about a collapse, when people are desperate, when they can’t get food or clothing, when they have no way of going from place to place, when they can’t protect themselves.

There aren’t enough police officers on the face of the earth to adequately handle a situation like that.

I suspect, that just in case our fiscal situation collapses, our monetary situation collapses, and following it the civil society collapses – that is the rule of law – that they want to be prepared.

The Pentagon and military have been war-gaming large-scale economic collapse and civil unrest for nearly four years. Those within our government who understand the ramifications a massive breakdown in our systems of commerce, transportation and justice are preparing by stockpiling weapons and ammo, tens of millions of food rations, and even emergency shelters. They are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on continuity of government programs and exercises, preparing for what they know is coming.

 

Greta Van Susteren was on “Hannity” to reveal how she was pressured by the White House to get Fox News to back down on Benghazi coverage.

In the wake of the Benghazi attacks, Van Susteren said that she got a call from someone high up in the administration. The official asked Van Susteren to tell Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin to stop reporting on an alleged “stand down” order because it was false.

Benghazi Bombshell: Security Team Told to ‘Stand Down’ By CIA Officer

This weekend in a Fox News Reporting special, security contractors gave their firsthand accounts of the Benghazi attacks. They say they were given a “stand down” order during the night of the fatal attacks.

The “On The Record” host said she asked for proof that the report was wrong, but the official did not provide any. She said that Fox News was then excluded from a State Department briefing on Benghazi, though the State Department said it was a mistake.

‘My Gut Is Yes’: Benghazi Security Contractor Says Stevens & Smith Would Be Alive If Team Wasn’t Delayed

Watch more above.

The FBI’s most recent national threat assessment for domestic terrorism makes no reference to Islamist terror threats, despite last year’s Boston Marathon bombing and the 2009 Fort Hood shooting—both carried out by radical Muslim Americans.

Instead, the internal FBI intelligence report concluded in its 2013 assessment published this month that the threat to U.S. internal security from extremists is limited to attacks and activities by eight types of domestic extremist movements—none motivated by radical Islam.

Click to Enlarge

They include anti-government militia groups and white supremacy extremists, along with “sovereign citizen” nationalists, and anarchists. Other domestic threat groups outlined by the FBI assessment include violent animal rights and environmentalist extremists, black separatists, anti- and pro-abortion activists, and Puerto Rican nationalists.

“Domestic extremist violence continues to be unpredictable and, at times, severe,” the report states.

A copy of the unclassified, 60-page National Threat Assessment for Domestic Extremism, dated Aug. 14, was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. It warns that the threat of domestic-origin extremism was moderate in 2013 and will remain so for this year.

“Domestic extremists collectively presented a medium-level threat to the United States in 2013; the FBI assesses the 2014 threat will remain close to this level,” the report said.

On black separatists, the report warned that a “high-profile racially charged crimes or events” could lead to an expansion of black separatist groups. The report identified three such groups as the New Black Panther Party, the Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ, and the Black Hebrew Israelite group as extremists under FBI scrutiny.

By Bill Gertz

Sooner or later everything becomes polarized in this divided country of ours. It’s against the rules to see the other side’s point of view.   That’s like giving ammo to the enemy. Besides, in media circles, where people make a good living dividing Americans, seeing the other guy’s point of view is bad for business.

When he first ran for president Barack Obama promised to unify us. You remember what he said about no Red America or Blue America, just a United States of America.

Instead we got the most polarizing president since Lincoln. I don’t know anybody who’s lukewarm on Mr. Obama. Liberals adore him – or at least have adored him for most of his presidency. And conservatives don’t simply disagree with him; many detest him. If he were caught on video robbing a bank, liberals would find an excuse to exonerate him. “He was just withdrawing money he had deposited, but the bank was closed. What was he supposed to do?” And if he found a cure for cancer, conservatives would condemn him for not finding it sooner. “If he didn’t play so much golf, he’d have found a cure years ago which would have saved the lives of many little children.”

Which brings us to Ferguson, Missouri. Nobody knows what actually happened there, except for the police officer involved – and we haven’t heard from him. Was he justified in shooting an unarmed kid 6 times or did he panic and overreact to some imaginary threat? We don’t know.

But in a polarized America, everybody is an expert. And everybody must take sides. To sit on the sidelines and wait for the facts to come in is a sign of weakness.  Warriors don’t sit on the sideline — ever.

So if you’re a liberal who gets what passes for news from MSNBC you know what happened: The racist white cop shot the black kid because he’s a racist white cop.

And if you’re a conservative who gets the lowdown from Fox, you’re pretty sure the cop is getting railroaded. Didn’t Michael Brown bust the cop in the face and fracture his eye socket? That’s what Fox News reported, initially getting its information from a conservative website. The report may be true – or not. But so far no one in authority has confirmed the story. But if you play right field, you’re hoping the story is true because that would confirm what you always knew – that the cop was right and the kid was wrong.

When they’re feeling generous both sides will say, “We have to find out what really happened” right before they tell us what really happened, even though they don’t know what really happened.

On MSNBC, we get contributor Michelle Bernard, a black woman, telling us that what happened in Ferguson amounts to a “war on black boys” that could turn into “genocide.” We get nothing from her about the inconvenient fact that black boys are far more likely to be killed by other black boys than by white cops.

Liberals condemn abusive cops – especially when young black males are involved. Conservatives say the problem isn’t racism, but dysfunction in too many black communities.

I’ve been a reporter long enough to know that there are bad cops out there. And some are racist bad cops. I’ve also seen dysfunction in too many black neighborhoods. But both sides have a problem in polarized America acknowledging that the other side might have a point. And on TV or talk radio or on the Web, it’s simply bad business to see more than one side. People turn to partisan media to get their own biases validated. They don’t want to hear the other side. That might require them to consider some arguments they’d rather not consider.

When the police in Ferguson released the video of Michael Brown stealing some cigars and roughing up the convenient storeowner, liberals said it was a “smear.”  Conservatives said – correctly, in my view – that a kid who had just committed a crime might also go after a cop he thought was on to him.

We don’t know.

None of this is a case for wishy-washy even-handedness. We all have deeply held opinions based on our values. There’s nothing wrong with that. But sometimes, especially when we don’t know the facts, it might be a good idea to keep an open mind. Maybe that cop was one of the bad ones. Who knows? Maybe the kid was a thug who after stealing the cigars instigated a confrontation with the cop that turned deadly. Could be. Hanging on to deeply held principles is one thing. Circling the wagons to protect your side, and your preconceived notions — ahead of the facts — is something else altogether.

By Bernie Goldberg