Report: John Kerry Recently Met With Iranian Official in Attempt to Save Iran Nuclear Deal

 

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Townhall.com

by timothy meads

A Boston Globe report came out Friday evening that former Secretary of State John Kerry has recently met with an Iranian official in order to save President Obama’s signature Iran nuclear deal. This raises serious concerns that Kerry violated the Logan Act by meeting with a foreign official.

From Boston Globe:….

….If the report is accurate, Kerry could have violated the Logan Act. The Logan Act, officially known as 18 U.S.C. §953, is “an old but rarely-invoked federal statute prohibiting unauthorized private diplomacy with foreign nations,” according to the Federalist Society blog.

The Logan Act reads: “Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”

This potential crime was not missed by conservatives on Twitter.

(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com …

The Top Ten Misreported And Underreported Stories Of 2016

Accuracy in Media

by Roger Aronoff

 

As we look back on 2016, we would like to highlight some of the American media’s worst abuses that occurred during the past year, including coverage of the very divisive election campaign. We have picked ten stories in which the media were either derelict in their duty to report the truth, or sold a false or biased narrative to the public that furthered the left’s agenda. In other cases, the media missed the story altogether or made excuses for their own biased reporting. We could easily have picked additional stories that meet those criteria, but arbitrarily chose to look at ten, in no particular order.

1.    Presidential Election Coverage
2.    Hillary Clinton Email / National Security Scandal
3.    Clinton Foundation / Pay for Play
4.    Rigged FBI Investigation
5.    Obama’s Legacy Failures
6.    Iran Nuclear Deal
7.    Obamacare
8.    The Economy
9.    Terror Attacks in the United States (Islamic Terror)
10.    Benghazi 

THE CLINTON RECORD: A devastating [and comprehensive] exposé

Frontpage Mag

Never in American history has anyone as unfit and undeserving as Hillary Clinton run for U.S. President. While she stands on the threshold of being elected to the White House, she quite literally belongs in a prison cell. This article lays out the case against her, chapter and verse.

Spinning and Spinning: The Ceiling Fan State Department

Free Republic

Have the Obama White House, the U.S. State Department, and part of the Washington media, press, and TV been engaged in a vast left-wing conspiracy to lie to and deceive the American public about the nuclear deal with Iran? One might think so, since no U.S. official or politician has been held responsible for the tangle of lies, attempt at censorship, and linguistic equivocations on the issue.

The great Machiavelli observed that “occasionally, words must veil the facts. But let this happen in a way that no one become aware of it.” This seems to have been the objective of Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser in the White House. Finally, he revealed that in his role as spin doctor, he had deliberately misled the media, the Washington foreign policy establishment that he called “The Blob,” and the country as a whole, over the nature of U.S. negotiations with Iran over the nuclear deal.

Rhodes co-opted part of the willing press corps and created what he called an “echo chamber” of journalists to convey a narrative that the U.S. had opened negotiations because a more moderate Iranian government had come into office after the seemingly moderate Hassan Rouhani was elected president of Iran in 2013.

But in fact, he lied. Secret negotiations had started more than two years earlier in 2011 in Muscat, Oman, when the extreme anti-American Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was still president of Iran. The talks were attended by then-senator John Kerry, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi with the knowledge, if not perhaps the approval, of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameinei.

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com …

Ex-Congressman Allen West Explodes Over Iran Deal During Fiery and Emotional Times Square Speech

Former Florida Congressman Allen West absolutely exploded over the Iran nuclear deal during a fiery speech at a “Stop Iran Deal Rally” in New York City’s Times Square on Wednesday. The Republican strongly criticized President Barack Obama’s leadership on the issue, calling him a “weakling” and “charlatan.” West asked the crowd of thousands “what message” the United States is sending by negotiating with the “number one state sponsor of terrorism” and a country that is holding “four Americans hostage.” “No different than the last time we had a weakling in the White House when we had 52 Americans being held hostage,” he added, referring to the Iranian hostage crisis during the Jimmy Carter administration.Later in his fiery speech, West accused Obama and other administration officials of “surrendering” to the Republic of Iran.

“I want President Obama to know one thing,” West said. “You may say that you have done something that no one else has done. You know why no one else has done it? Because it’s a damn stupid thing you just did.”

He continued: “If people are upset because of what I’m saying, I really don’t care. Because I had a father that stood at World War II…I gave 22 years of my life to make sure that that great beacon of liberty, freedom and democracy continues to stand. And I have a nephew, I have friends that are still serving on the front lines — and my commitment is to the oath that I took on 31, July, 1982, to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

Organizers estimated roughly 10,000 people attended the rally on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.

Iran Nuclear Deal Much Worse than Experts Predicted

Family Security Matters

The nuclear agreement with Iran announced Tuesday was billed by EU, Iranian and US officials as historic.  It is that: it is a historically dangerous accord that will destabilize the Middle East by legitimizing the nuclear program of a radical Islamist state and a state-sponsor of terror.

The provisions of this agreement – available HERE – contains minor concessions by Iran but huge concessions by the United States that will Iran to continue its nuclear program with weak verification provisions.  Conditions for sanctions relief will be very easy for Iran to meet.

Iran will not only continue to enrich uranium under the agreement, it will continue to develop advanced centrifuges that will reduce the timeline to an Iranian nuclear bomb.  Unlike the interim agreement that set these talks in motion that barred Iran from testing advanced centrifuges with uranium (a provision that Iran violated in mid-2014), the new agreement only requires that R&D of advanced centrifuges be tested “in a manner that does not accumulate enriched uranium.” This means Iran will be allowed to do more intensive testing of advanced centrifuges than it was permitted during the nuclear talks.

The Obama administration will claim provisions of the deal requiring Iran to dilute or send out of the country its reactor-grade enriched uranium stockpile is a great victory.  It isn’t.  If Iran sells this enriched uranium (which the president said today is enough to make 10 nuclear bombs if enriched to weapons-grade), it will receive natural uranium in return.  This will solve a problem Iran has concerning access to natural uranium.  (Iran has little natural uranium and its mines are running out.)  If Iran dilutes this enriched uranium, it can be enriched to higher levels in several months.  Moreover, since the agreement allows Iran to continue to develop advanced centrifuges, Tehran will have the capacity to quickly replaced its enriched uranium stockpile.

Erasing the Constitution’s Treaty Powers Is No Longer a Leftist Pipe Dream

Independent Sentinel

Our governing document has been effectively erased in a number of ways, but none more dangerous than ceding the power of treaty ratification and misusing treaties to distort the powers enumerated under the Constitution, but that is what is happening.

According to Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, “[The president] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur…”

The United States Senate has systematically ceded their power to ratify treaties by a two-thirds super majority vote. We are seeing the decline of constitutional treaty powers and the rise of the U.N. in the lives of Americans.

From the Iran nuclear deal to trade deals to climate change, Barack Obama has dramatically altered the Senate’s power over treaties and has assumed powers the executive was not meant to have.

No matter what one’s views of the nuclear deal with Iran, one must know that it is creating an unconstitutional method for approving treaties and it sets a model for future treaties that should concern every American.

Breaking…Nuclear Deal Would Allow Iran to Build a Bomb in SloMo, Congress Will Be Ignored

Independent Sentinel

The NY Times and the AP reported today on a proposal in Geneva now being considered which would allow Iranians to continue nuclear production with limitations for ten years but with a corresponding easing of sanctions.

The Associated Press (AP) reported that a potential deal would phase out restrictions on Iran’s uranium enrichment activities in the final years which would potentially allow them to build a nuclear weapon unobstructed towards the end of the term.

The core idea would be to reward Iran for good behavior over the last years of any agreement, gradually lifting constraints on its uranium enrichment and slowly easing economic sanctions, AP reports.

In other words, they can not only be a nuclear threshold state with the the ability to eventually have the bomb. Sanctions, our one bargaining chip, would be thing of the past.