Karzai accuses U.S. and Taliban of conspiring to keep troops in Afghanistan

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Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo / Dept. of Defense via AFP - Getty Images

U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel speaks with Afghan president Hamid Karzai during a private meeting in Kabul.

By Mirwais Harooni and Phil Stewart, Reuters

KABUL —Afghan President Hamid Karzai ratcheted up his criticism of the United States on Sunday, marring a debut visit by the new U.S. defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, and highlighting tensions that could undermine Washington's strategy to wind down the unpopular war.

A day after two Taliban bombings killed 17 people, Karzai accused the United States and the Taliban of colluding to convince Afghans that foreign forces were needed beyond 2014, when NATO is set to wrap up its combat mission and most troops withdraw.

"Those bombs that went off in Kabul and Khost were not a show of force to America. They were in service of America. It was in the service of the 2014 slogan to warn us if they (Americans) are not here then Taliban will come," Karzai said in a speech.

"In fact those bombs, set off yesterday in the name of the Taliban, were in the service of Americans to keep foreigners longer in Afghanistan."

It was one of several inflammatory comments by Karzai and his government on Sunday and follow weeks of efforts by the Afghan leader to curtail U.S. military activity in Afghanistan, including a call to kick American special forces out of an important province. U.S. commanders see special operations forces as key to the end-phase of the conflict.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel responds to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's statements in which Karzai accused the U.S. and Taliban with working together.

Hours after Karzai's speech, Hagel said he spoke "clearly and directly" about the comments during his first meeting with the Afghan leader since becoming U.S. defense secretary on February 27.

Hagel appeared at pains to be respectful of Karzai and avoid sharp criticism, but he told reporters that any collusion between the U.S. and the Taliban "wouldn't make a lot of sense."

The U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Joseph Dunford, was more categorical.

"We have fought too hard over the past 12 years, we have shed too much blood over the past 12 years, we have done too much to help the Afghan security forces grow over the last 12 years to ever think that violence or instability would be to our advantage," Dunford told reporters travelling with Hagel.

Of Karzai's remarks, he added: "I'll let others judge whether that's particularly helpful or not at the political level."

Still, politics will be key over the next several months, as the United States and NATO allies work to carry out their strategy of pulling out their troops and decide how large a residual force to leave behind after 2014.

NATO defense chiefs meeting in Brussels last month discussed keeping a combined U.S. and allied force of 8,000-12,000 in Afghanistan, focusing on training Afghan troops and countering the remnants of al Qaeda, the Pentagon has said.

Any deal for a follow-on force, which Washington says must include immunity for U.S. troops, would need Karzai's blessing.

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ABUSING STUDENTS? TALIBAN TALKS?

Karzai has a history of making incendiary statements that exasperate Washington but the nature and awkward timing of his latest remarks about the United States were exceptional.

He also alleged on Sunday that the Taliban and the United States had been holding talks in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar on a "daily basis," further fuelling his suggestion that Washington and the militants were working at common purposes.

"I told the president that it was not true," Hagel said. "The fact is any prospect for peace or political settlements - that has to be led by the Afghans."

The Taliban spokesman in Afghanistan, Zabihullah Mujahid, denied that negotiations with the United States had resumed.

Karzai's government also alleged that U.S.-led forces and Afghans working with them were abusing and arresting university students. Karzai issued an executive order banning foreign troops from entering all education institutions.

Hagel and Karzai were meant to have appeared together at a joint news conference on Sunday evening. But, in a reminder of the threats posed by the resilient insurgency, U.S. officials said it was canceled because of security concerns.

Hagel was about a kilometer away and within earshot of a Saturday morning suicide attack outside the defense ministry that killed nine people. He was meant to have met his Afghan counterpart there this weekend but the venue was later changed.

Hagel's visit coincided with the passing of a deadline imposed by Karzai for U.S. special forces to leave Wardak province accusing them of overseeing torture and killings.

U.S. forces have denied involvement in any abuses.

Hagel has sounded hopeful that a deal could be reached on their continued deployment but acknowledged no breakthroughs were made in his talks with Karzai.

It was unclear how Hagel's trip would be viewed by U.S. Republicans who bitterly fought his nomination to become defense chief, portraying him as soft on Iran and questioning his judgment.

Hagel at times appeared sympathetic to the stresses of political life that Karzai must endure.

"I know these are difficult issues for President Karzai and the Afghan people. And I was once a politician," Hagel said. "So I can understand the kind of pressures - especially leaders of countries - are always under." 

Bin Laden's son-in-law captured, charged in US with conspiring to kill Americans

Wealth Inequality in America..you must see this!

seeker401

Infographics on the distribution of wealth in America, highlighting both the inequality and the difference between our perception of inequality and the actual numbers. The reality is often not what we think it is.

Holder: No drone strikes on Americans in US, except in ’extraordinary circumstance’

Michael Reynolds / EPA

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder

openchannel

By Michael Isikoff
National Investigative Correspondent, NBC News

The Obama administration has no intention of carrying out drone strikes against suspected terrorists in the United States, but could use them in response to “an extraordinary circumstance” such as the 9/11 terror attacks, according to a letter from Attorney General Eric Holder obtained by NBC News.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who received the March 4 letter from Holder, called the attorney general’s refusal to rule out drone strikes in the U.S. “more than frightening.” 

The letter from Holder surfaced just as the Senate Intelligence Committee was voting 12-3 to approve White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan to be CIA director. The vote came after the White House agreed to share additional classified memos on targeted drone strikes against U.S. citizens overseas.

Paul had threatened to hold up Brennan's confirmation on the floor of the Senate if the administration did not clarify whether targeted drone strikes could be used inside the U.S.

In his letter, Holder called the question of drone strikes inside the U.S. "entirely hypothetical, unlikely to occur and we hope no president will ever have to confront. … As a policy matter, moreover, we reject the use of military force where well-established law enforcement authorities in this country provide the best means for incapacitating a terrorist threat."

But Holder then appeared to leave the door open to such strikes in extreme circumstances.

Read the full letter

"It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the president to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States. For example, the president could  conceivably have no choice but to authorize the military to use such force if necessary to protect the homeland in the circumstances of a catastrophic attack like the ones suffered on Dec. 7, 1941 and Sept. 11, 2001."

Kerry confirms US helping train Syrian opposition

foxnews

Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed to Fox News that the U.S. is training anti-Assad forces in the Syria conflict, saying Tuesday the hope is to convince President Bashar Assad to "change his current calculation."
Kerry, speaking to Fox News in Doha, Qatar, became the first U.S. official to acknowledge the off-site training on the record. He would not go into detail about the training, describing it as "one part" of the U.S. effort and something that "a lot of countries" are doing.
"I think what President Obama is hoping is to build on what has already happened. The president put in place sanctions and that helps to strip some of President Assad's ability to fuel his war machine," Kerry said.
The New York Times previously reported on the effort to train Syrian opposition forces, quoting unnamed officials, but this is the first time the State Department has spoken openly about it.
"There are a lot of nations working at this," Kerry said of the effort to pressure Assad. "And so I think President Assad needs to read the tea leaves correctly."
Kerry, who is on his maiden international tour as secretary of state, cited last week's meeting in Rome where European nations joined the U.S. in offering support to the Syrian opposition. This included an additional $60 million in aid from the Obama administration and a commitment to provide non-lethal aid.
Kerry described the international sentiment as a "conviction that no nation is going to stand by while he slaughters his people with SCUD missiles, and his jets dropping bombs. And ... we've ratcheted up yet another level with the hope of convincing him and his allies that the time has come to really negotiate with the transitional government."
Kerry also discussed the ongoing investigation into the Sept. 11, 2012, terror attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. Though some in Congress are concerned the investigation has not made measurable progress over the last six months, Kerry voiced confidence in the FBI's work.
"Justice sometimes takes a while when you operate by high standards and when you need the levels of evidence that we do. But we are working at it and we will continue to work at it," he said.
Kerry revealed that he has visited with one of the survivors of the attack, whom he described as "a remarkably courageous person, who is doing very, very well." He said he also talked to the survivor's wife. Kerry could not say why the public has heard so little about the survivors of the attack.
Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, died in the Benghazi assault.
Kerry, who in 2004 ran for president against George W. Bush largely on an anti-Iraq war message, on Tuesday praised President Obama for "getting our troops out of Iraq."
But, as the U.S. approaches 10 years since the start of the Iraq war, Kerry also said Bush "deserves credit for what the troops did when they went in."
He said the troops "did an absolutely stunning job, an extraordinary job."
Fox News' James Rosen contributed to this report. 

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/05/kerry-confirms-us-helping-train-syrian-opposition/#ixzz2MgDjGOr1

John Nichols – Speech on the History of American Socialism

John Nichols

NewZeal

An interesting speech by open socialist and The Nation journalist John Nichols, to Greater Detroit Democratic Socialists of America, just after the 2012 election.

Barack Obama gets a lot of attention and praise, while denying (as DSA always does, as a matter of course) that he is a socialist.

Socialists A. Philip Randolph, Michael Harrington and Victor Reuther get credit for the birth of the US civil rights movement and the successes of their protege Martin Luther King, Jr.

Congressman John Conyers is also in the audience.

Nichols also correctly exposes the Marxist influences in the early Republican Party – something that has unfortunately never been completely eradicated.

Very worthwhile viewing for those who want to understand the hidden and pervasive influence of socialists in US politics.

Obama Administration To Extend Direct Aid To Syrian Rebels

patdollard

Excerpted from THE HILL: The White House is considering plans to extend direct aid to Syrian rebels seeking the ouster of President Bashar Assad, according to a report.
The move, first reported by The Washington Post on Wednesday, would be a major policy shift for the administration, which has been reluctant to provide any military assistance to the Syrian opposition.

According to the report, the White House is weighing a number of proposals that could include providing equipment such as body armor and armored vehicles or military training. The administration is also considering sending humanitarian aid directly to the rebel groups. But White House officials still remain opposed to providing the opposition with weapons, according to the Post.
The Obama administration has faced pressure from many lawmakers to do more to help forces battling Assad, but the White House has expressed fears that military hardware could fall into the hands of Islamist insurgents.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) earlier this month called Syria one of the “most shameful chapters” in U.S. diplomatic history and said it was “disgraceful” that Obama was not doing more to aid the insurrection.
The contentious issue has also led to splits within the administration, with former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta telling lawmakers during a hearing that he and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had backed providing arms to rebels last year. That push, though, was overruled by the president.

The report also comes as Secretary of State John Kerry is in Europe this week, where he will attend a summit with members of the Syrian opposition to discuss efforts to bring a peaceful end to the civil war.
Syrian opposition leaders had threatened to boycott this week’s summit, expressing frustration that Western powers were not doing enough to aid their fight. But the leaders agreed to sit down for multilateral talks after Kerry made public and private pleas asking them to join multilateral talks.
The Syrian regime on Monday also said that they would be open to peace talk with the rebels, but the Obama administration has questioned their sincerity and insisted that any agreement must be preconditioned on Assad leaving power.

“That future cannot include Bashar al-Assad, who has long since forsaken any opportunity he might have had to participate in Syria’s future,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said on Monday. “He has so much blood on his hands. He has been engaging in a prolonged assault on his own people that has cost tens of thousands of lives, of innocent civilian lives.”

Kerry In Germany: 'We Somehow Make It Through' With All The 'Stupid' Americans

breitbart

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Germany: "In America, you have a right to be stupid, if you want to be, and you have a right to be disconnected to somebody else if you want to be. And we tolerate that – we somehow make it through that."

Karzai expels US special forces from key Afghanistan province

 

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Read on worldnews >>

KeyWiki Expose Minnesota’s Socialist Elected Officials

Gus Hall

NewZea
Minnesota has always had a strong socialist presence.

Decades long Communist Party USA leader Gus Hall (Arvo Kustaa Halberg) was a “Red Finn” from the Iron Range.

’90s Minneapolis Mayor Jim Schneibel was a card carrying member of the US’ largest Marxist group, Democratic Socialists of America. His ’80s predecessor Donald M. Fraser was also a committed socialist.

Then there was the late Senator Paul Wellstone, tragically killed in a 2002 plane crash during his second election campaign. Still an icon to many in the state, Wellstone was a long term friend and supporter of Democratic Socialists of America.

Today’s bunch are no different.

Governor Mark Dayton is a far leftist, with ties to both Democratic Socialists of America and Communist Party USA.

Communist Party official, Mark Froemke, and Governor Mark Dayton, January 14, 2010

Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, the man charged with overseeing Minnesota’s elections, is a hard core leftist, with secret ties to the Communist Party.

Senator Al Franken is also a serious leftist, with connections to both communist and socialist groups.

Congressman Keith Ellison too has strong ties to the hard left.

Workers World Party member Abayomi Azikiwe, Keith Ellison, Detroit April 6, 2008

Then there is veteran senior state representative Michael Paymar – a long time, payed up member of Democratic Socialists of America.

Alan Maki

And we cannot forget Alan Maki. When he’s not fly fishing in the northern rivers, this former Communist Party member is organizing casino unions and serving at high levels in the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.

Minnesota has a socialist problem, which is why heartland Minnesota conservatives are forced to endure and pay for one of the most socialist state governments in the union.

Follow the blue links to check out their bios.

Where else but KeyWiki can you get this information? Who else has the tenacity to gather this information and the willingness to disseminate it?

Please help the KeyWiki team get this vital information before the American public.

They need to know exactly how they are manipulating them and hiding their real affiliations to gain control over their lives.

WHAT RECOVERY? HOUSING WOES DRAG ON AFTER SIX YEARS

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John W. Schoen 

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If this is a housing recovery, then it’s a ‘recovery’ in name only. The patient remains pretty ill, and it’s going to be a long road back to health after one of the worst housing busts on record.

Fresh data released this week paint a mixed picture. The government reported Wednesday that housing starts fell 8.5 percent in January, though starts on single family homes edged up higher. Building permits – a barometer of future construction – posted solid gains.

But the pace of construction remains less than half what it was during the late-2005 peak of the housing boom. And the recovery has come in fits and starts. On Tuesday, a closely-watched report from the homebuilding industry noted sluggish sales traffic last month after steady gains through 2012.

“The single-family market in the Northeast, hurt by high foreclosure rates and a slowdown in population growth, is struggling,” said Patrick Newport, a housing economist at IHS Global Insight. “The single-family segments in the other three regions are picking up -- but slowly, and levels remain depressed."

Despite multiple government policies to spur sales, including the Federal Reserve’s ongoing effort to hold mortgage rates near the floor, sales of both new and existing homes still badly lag “normal” levels.

“The market appears to be recovering, but you can't call this a normal market when you have the lowest interest rates in a hundred years and half of all borrowers are still putting basically zero down," said Ed Pinto, an American Enterprise Institute fellow and former executive of government-backed mortgage giant Fannie Mae. “That is not a normal market."

Neither was the 2007 housing bust. After peaking at 7.1 million in 2005, the annual pace of home sales crashed to 4.1 million in 2008. Last year, sales edged back up to about 4.7 million. Though most housing analysts and economists believe sales and princes have bottomed, the recovery pales in comparison to past housing rebounds.

One reason: no matter how low interest rates fall, after playing too loose with credit during boom, banks are now much choosier about who gets a loan.

“The biggest concern on a really robust housing market rebound now is coming from mortgage market constraints," said David Goldberg, an analyst who follows the homebuilding industry at UBS. "It’s tough to get a mortgage if you have marginal credit right now."

In many markets around the country, sales of existing homes also are being held back by tight inventories. Since 2010, the availability of existing homes for sale has fallen by half. In December, for-sale listings amounted to about 4.4 months’ worth of sales -- down from 9.4 months in 2010.

Anything less than a six months’ supply is considered a “tight” market. Some of the tightest markets -- including Sacramento, San Jose and Oakland -- are down to less than a months' supply, according to John Burns Real Estate Consulting.

After years on the sidelines, some sellers may be holding out for a better price. But millions more are unable to sell because they owe more than their home is worth.

Some 10 million homeowners -- roughly a fifth of houses with a mortgage -- are still underwater despite the recent uptick in prices, according to Lender Processing Services. Though rising home prices have reduced that number since the depths of the bust, the lingering “negative equity” of the mortgage metldown is keeping houses off the market. Few of those potential sellers feel like dipping into savings to write the bank a check for the shortfall.

Home builders have fared a bit better, as new home sales rebounded by 20 percent last year compared to a 9 percent bounce for existing homes.

But that bigger new-home bounce comes largely because home builders fell into an even bigger hole. Annual sales fell from a peak of 1.2 million in 2005 to just 306,000 in 2011, according to Census data. So the 20 percent rebound is a lot weaker than it looks.

Many headwinds The home building industry faces its own set of headwinds. For starters, many of the industry’s smallest builders were wiped out by the housing bust. Those that survived are finding spot shortages of labor and supplies where demand is coming back, according to Lisa Marquis Jackson, a Dallas-based housing analyst at John Burns Real Estate Consulting.

Some building material manufacturers and distributors are skittish about adding more capacity until they see convincing evidence that the housing recovery is on firmly on track, she said. In some cases, they’re having trouble getting financing to expand.

“It takes a lot of money to get payroll back up and to get new people on board,” said Jackson. “The lending environment still isn't completely comfortable coming in to support materials suppliers and distributors.”

Other builders are having a hard time finding enough skilled workers to get the job done. Though housing starts have rebounded strongly -- up 37 percent from a year ago -- construction employment is up by just 1.5 percent in the same period.

Builders may be having a harder assembling skilled work crews because wages were cut sharply following the housing bust. Others are finding that the workers simply aren't there anymore.

“A lot of these workers found other jobs,” said Jackson. “They still have some scars from what they went through in the downturn. It’s going to take a lot to lure them back.”

It’s also turning out to be harder to lure back first-time home buyers, typically one of the strongest sources of demand in a recovery. After the historic, late-2000s price slide, many younger buyers are skeptical of the longstanding conventional wisdom that housing is a surefire long-term investment.

That’s meant that investors, lured by bargain prices, have become a much larger share of buyers than in past recoveries. But it remains to be seen how durable that “hot money” demand will be, said Pinto, the former Fannie Mae executive.

“In two or three years, they could all turn on a dime and decide this isn't the asset class they thought it was, and then they sell,” he said. “If that happens right at the time that interest rates happen to go up, then I think we're into a really tough situation.”

Expert: US in cyberwar arms race with China, Russia

openchannel

Rick Wilking / Reuters file

First Lt Michael Newman examines a server rack that is isolated from the Internet at the Air Force Space Command Network Operations & Security Center at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo., in July 2010.

By Robert Windrem, Senior Investigative Producer, NBC News

The United States is locked in a tight race with China and Russia to build destructive cyberweapons capable of seriously damaging other nations’ critical infrastructure, according to a leading expert on hostilities waged via the Internet.

Scott Borg, CEO of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit institute that advises the U.S. government and businesses on cybersecurity, said all three nations have built arsenals of sophisticated computer viruses, worms, Trojan horses and other tools that place them atop the rest of the world in the ability to inflict serious damage on one another, or lesser powers.

Ranked just below the Big Three, he said, are four U.S. allies: Great Britain, Germany, Israel and perhaps Taiwan.

But in testament to the uncertain risk/reward ratio in cyberwarfare, Iran has used attacks on its nuclear program to bolster its offensive capabilities and is now developing its own "cyberarmy," Borg said.

Borg offered his assessment of the current state of cyberwar capabilities Tuesday in the wake of a report by the American computer security company Mandiant linking hacking attacks and cyber espionage against the U.S. to a sophisticated Chinese group known as “Peoples Liberation Army Unit 61398.

In today’s brave new interconnected world, hackers who can defeat security defenses are capable of disrupting an array of critical services, including delivery of water, electricity and heat, or bringing transportation to a grinding halt. U.S. senators last year received a closed-door briefing at which experts demonstrated how a power company employee could take down the New York City electrical grid by clicking on a single email attachment, the New York Times reported.

U.S. officials rarely discuss offensive capability when discussing cyberwar, though several privately told NBC News recently that the U.S. could "shut down" the electrical grid of a smaller nation -- Iran, for example – if it chose to do so.

Borg echoed that assessment, saying the U.S. cyberwarriors, who work within the National Security Agency, are “very good across the board. … There is a formidable capability.”

“Stuxnet and Flame (malware used to disrupt and gather intelligence on Iran's nuclear program) are demonstrations of that,” he said. “… (The U.S.) could shut down most critical infrastructure in potential adversaries relatively quickly.”

China, Russia have different prioritiesBorg said China and Russia have similar capacity to cause mayhem, but have different priorities and skill sets.

“Russia is best at military espionage and operations,” he said. “That's what they have focused on for a long time. China is looking for crucial business information and technology. China's main focus is stealing technology. These things quite separate. You use different tools on critical infrastructure than you use for military espionage and different tools again on stealing technology."

Borg said that each has its strong suit. "The Russians are technically advanced. The Chinese just have more people dedicated to the effort, by a wide margin,” he said. “They are not as innovative or creative as the U.S. and Russia. China has the greatest quantity, if not quality."

Borg said the group featured in Mandiant’s report, the People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398, may be one of the most important groups working in China, but not necessarily the most important.

"There are at least two dozen groups carrying out aggressive operations against the U.S.,” he said. “They get in each other’s way and trip over one another, but they are all operating with the tacit approval of the Chinese government.

"They're not cooperating with each other because they don’t share capabilities," he added. "One group has good programming, but is bad at access or targeting." 

The Chinese hacking efforts are so broad, Borg said, that the highest-ranking Chinese officials “almost certainly do not know what all the groups are doing,” or the consequences. As a result, he added, they have been embarrassed by reports like the one in Tuesday’s New York Times, which first reported on the Mandiant assessment.

China is the most likely of the superpowers to leave a calling card, making their work the easiest to track. "China is very arrogant in its authorship of cyberweapons,” Borg said. “It does little to conceal its identity."

That’s in sharp contrast to the Russians, who he noted are not above writing code in Chinese to throw off investigators.

While the U.S. could respond to ongoing cyberattacks from China and Russia by shutting down the power grid of "any of its adversaries” and causing severe physical damage, Borg said it is encumbered by several factors.

One is its vulnerability to cyberwarfare as the world’s most networked nation, he said.

And from a geopolitical standpoint, Borg said, the U.S. would not want to badly damage the economy of either China or Russia. In fact, he said, the U.S. would almost certainly have to incorporate protections for critical systems like the power grid in any cyberattack.

Also, detecting the source of hostilities is not always easy, Borg said, as cybertracks are not as easy to follow as missile tracks. That means “mutually assured destruction,” the main strategic tenet of the Cold War, is problematic at best when talking about cyberwar, he said.

"It might be difficult to determine proportionate response,” he said. “It might not be simple to attack the attacker.”

For example, policymakers may think an attack has been carried out by the Chinese, when it was actually the work of the Russians or a rising power in the cyber world, like Iran. That is why intelligence -- getting insight into these operations -- is more important in a crisis than cyberforensics, which can take longer and not be as certain.

"There is no MAD in the Cold War sense," he said, "You can’t be 'assured' of attribution. The attack can be anonymous. It can be spoofed," or disguised as coming from another source. 

Iran developing 'serious capability'The U.S. first began to develop its own offensive capabilities 20 years ago when several strategic thinkers, particularly at the Naval Post-Graduate School, began to see the possibilities. It was not so much a strategic priority, but more "people familiar with electronics and hackers exercising their imagination." (Borg says one of those thinkers, Winn Schwartau, used fiction to discuss the threat and the possibilities, in a 1991 book, "Terminal Compromise.")

While the U.S. has the means to respond and to defend itself, Borg notes that some countries have no recourse. He cited the Russian invasion of the Republic of Georgia in August 2008, when the Georgian government and media infrastructure was quickly compromised.

What was particularly interesting, Borg said, was that the Russian military and intelligence services weren’t directly involved.

"The first wave was carried by organized crime," he noted. "The second wave was carried out by a (hacker) group organized though social media.” He said Russian hackers could download the attack software from a variety of popular sites, including dating and gun-collecting websites.

In both cases, Borg concluded, the organizers apparently were tipped off early about the timing of Russian military operations, he said.

The attack on Georgia also illustrated another aspect of cyberwarfare, Borg said, noting that Georgia, Estonia and Lithuania afterward formed a cyberalliance, leaving them in a better position to deal with future assaults.

That also appears to be the case with Iran, which recently announced that it decided to establish cyber army and claimed to have 4,000 to 5,000 military personnel involved in defensive and offensive operations. That isn’t all bluster, Borg said, noting that when the U.S. leveled new sanctions on Iranian banks last year, U.S. banks suddenly came under attack.

"Iran is developing a serious capability," said Borg. “It's exaggerating the present capabilities, but it’s working toward the future."

That’s especially troubling because the risk of smaller nations waging cyberwar against one other may be higher than with the online superpowers, he said.

He cited reports indicating that Iran may have been behind what he called one of the more serious cyberattacks to date -- an assault last August on the Saudi Aramco computer network that disabled more than 30,000 computers used to control the flow of Saudi oil. The Saudi Interior Ministry blamed "foreign countries" for the attack.

Borg said he believes the attack was an "Iranian fundamentalist attack ... at some point loosely the under auspices of Iran, and blessed by Iran. The fundamentalist group made a claim of responsibility. ... “Based on technical analysis, the claim has credibility."

For that reason, Borg says he is less worried about the possibility of China or Russia launching a catastrophic attack against the U.S. than he is about the emerging cyberpowers.

“What I’m really concerned about isn’t Russia or China, but attacks from Iran or terrorist groups working with state actors,” he said.

What Are These Strange Barcode-Like Images Visible in Aerial Pictures of the U.S.?

theblaze

By Liz Klimas

Many might not know it, but there are dozens of large, barcode-like paintings across the United States. Just how long have they been there though and what do they do?

Fort Huachuca in Arizona. (Image: Google Earth/Center for Land Use Interpretation)

You might remember the strange structures spotted via Google Earth in China’s Gobi desert a couple years ago that were ultimately thought to be satellite calibration structures. According to a recent report by the Center for Land Use Interpretation, these two-dimensional structures in America perform a similar function.

A target in Maryland. (Photo: Google Earth/ Center for Land Use Interpretation)

They’re aerial photo calibration targets, most of which were put in their current locations in the 1950s and 60s by the Air Force and NASA and some are still in use today.

Here’s more about the targets:

The targets function like an eye chart at the optometrist, where the smallest group of bars that can be resolved marks the limit of the resolution for the optical instrument that is being used. For aerial photography, it provides a platform to test, calibrate, and focus aerial cameras traveling at different speeds and altitudes. The targets can also be used in the same way by satellites.

Eglin Air Force Base, Florida (Photo: Google Earth/ Center for Land Use Interpretation)

The report stated that most of the targets fall within restricted groundspace: Eglin AFB, Florida; the Nevada Test Site; St. Inigoes, Maryland; and Fort Huachuca, Arizona; Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio; Travis AFB, California; Beaufort Marine Corps Base and Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina.

The Center for Land Use Interpretation reported the largest concentration of the barcode targets — 15 in a 20 mile range — falls within Edwards Air Force Base.

Edwards Air Force Base (Photo: Google Earth/ Center for Land Use Interpretation)

“There is some variation in the size and shape of the targets at Edwards, suggesting updates and modifications for specific programs,” the report stated. “A number of the targets there also have aircraft hulks next to them, added to provide additional, realistic subjects for testing cameras. Some of these planes are themselves unusual and rare military jets, officially in the collection of the base museum, despite being left out on the range.”

The ones in the Mojave desert, the report stated, have been used to calibrate A12, SR-71 and U-2 planes. Drones also could use these targets to calibrate their surveillance cameras and sensors.

Most of the targets, CLUI stated are on concrete or asphalt consisting of black and white paint in a 78 foot by 53 foot pattern of parallel and perpendicular bars at different sizes.

The CLUI stated that it picked out images of the barcode-like calibration targets from The Art of Citizen Space Exploration, which is running at the University of California Riverside Sweeney Art Gallery from January 19 to May 18.

'HALF-BAKED' BILL? Republicans Rip Obama's Proposed Immigration Plan

foxnews

Senate Republicans are pushing back on a proposed White House plan on immigration reform that allows illegal immigrants to become legal permanent residents within eight years, saying Congress will never pass such a proposal.

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul said Sunday the plan is untenable and so outside of what the country wants that it suggests President Obama is not sincere about passing immigration reform.

“The president is torpedoing his own plan,” Paul told “Fox News Sunday.” “It shows me he is really not serious. … The bill won’t pass.”

The draft immigration bill being circulated by the White House also includes plans for a new visa for illegal immigrants living in the United States, as first reported by USA Today.

Obama's bill would create a "Lawful Prospective Immigrant" visa for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in the country. The bill includes more security funding and requires business owners to adopt a system for verifying the immigration status of new hires within four years, the newspaper said.

On Saturday, Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio called the White House proposal "half-baked and seriously flawed."

Rubio -- part of an eight-member, bipartisan Senate panel working on an immigration reform bill -- also said the purported proposal was disappointing to those “working on serious solutions” and repeats failures of past legislation.

He said the White House also erred in not seeking input from Republican lawmakers.

"If actually proposed, the president's bill would be dead on arrival in Congress, leaving us with unsecured borders and a broken legal immigration system for years to come," Rubio said in a statement.

Obama Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said Sunday the White House hasn't proposed "anything to Capitol Hill yet" on immigration.

He told ABC's "This Week" that the White House is indeed working with the Senate panel.

"Let's make sure that it doesn't have to be proposed" because the White House and Congress are able to work out a deal, McDonough also said

USA Today also reported that the bill would require that immigrants pass a criminal background check, submit biometric information and pay fees to qualify for the new visa.

Immigrants who served more than a year in prison for a criminal conviction or were convicted of three or more crimes and were sentenced to a total of 90 days in jail would not be eligible. Crimes committed in other countries that would bar immigrants from legally entering the country would also be ineligible.

Those immigrants facing deportation would be eligible to apply for the visa, the newspaper reported. Immigrants would be eligible to apply for a green card within eight years, if they learn English and U.S. history and government, and they would later be eligible to become U.S. citizens.

Last month, the group of senators announced they had agreed on the general outline of an immigration plan.

Obama has said he would not submit his own legislation to Congress so long as law makers acted "in a timely manner." If they failed, he said, "I will send up a bill based on my proposal and insist that they vote on it right away."

Paul also told Fox he will submit an amendment to the upcoming Senate bill calling for a General Accounting Office report stating U.S. borders are secure that must be periodically updated.

Clark Stevens, a White House spokesman, said Saturday that Obama still supports a bipartisan effort to craft a comprehensive immigration bill. "While the president has made clear he will move forward if Congress fails to act, progress continues to be made and the administration has not prepared a final bill to submit," he said in a statement.

Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, described the draft bill as a "very moderate" proposal. While the path to citizenship was welcomed by Noorani, he said not enough attention was being paid to future immigration.

"Commonsense immigration reform must include a functioning immigration system for the future," Noorani said in a statement. "Reform does not begin and end with citizenship and enforcement alone."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/17/report-bill-would-set-8-year-path-to-residency/#ixzz2LBuVnkxp

Most Wanted: Dorner's luck ran out, but these five fugitives still elude cops

By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News

Andre Neverson

For six days this month, the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service joined local enforcement in the desperate search for cop-turned-killer Christopher Dorner. The biggest manhunt Los Angeles has ever seen is now over, but there is no shortage of suspects in cold-blooded murders commanding the attention of federal agents.

The worst of them have been given spots on two lists: the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives and the Marshals Service's' top 15 fugitives. The rosters are a catalog of atrocities: a mother and two children with their throats slit, a little girl kidnapped and strangled, an armored-car guard ambushed after a pickup.

"It's a full-court press with these people," said Lenny DePaul, a U.S. Marshals commander who heads one of the agency's seven regional task forces devoted to capturing violent fugitives.

"There's funding, there's resources, there's travel -- no boundaries when it comes to a top 15 case."

The FBI's most-wanted each has at least one agent in a field office assigned to each case, bolstered by a special unit at headquarters in Washington which can "bring all the tools out of the toolboxes," said Jayne Challman, chief of the Violent Crimes Threat Section.

The suspects are on the two lists because the crimes are heinous, but also because the feds think extra attention and publicity will help catch them.

"I could name a thousand cases that could be on the top 15," said DePaul, who noted that the only way to get off the Marshals' list is in handcuffs or a coffin.

Since the FBI list was established in 1950, 497 fugitives have earned the dubious distinction, and all but 30 of them have been caught. The longest anyone has lingered is 28 years -- Victor Manuel Gerena, who is still wanted for a terrifying bank robbery in 1983.

DePaul said every lead on a top 15 case is followed up, quickly and exhaustively. Though many turn out to be dead ends, the marshals keep looking for the one that will let them cross another name off the list.

"They make mistakes," he said of the suspects. "Their resources run out, they communicate with someone, they slip up. Their luck runs out."

Here are some of the accused killers on the FBI and Marshals' list whose luck hasn't run out -- yet:

Andrew Neverson: He's a ladies' man with the "gift of gab" -- and a hair-trigger temper, investigators say. Neverson, 48, is wanted for the back-to-back murders of his sister and ex-girlfriend and has eluded capture for more than a decade.

Born in Trinidad, he moved to Brooklyn, N.Y., as a teenager, but was deported in 2000 after serving five years for shooting a girlfriend's uncle five times. His family helped him sneak back into the U.S. months later with a bogus passport -- a fatal mistake, according to the marshals.

In 2002, Neverson allegedly killed his sister, Patricia Neverson, 39, with a gunshot to the head after an argument over money. Three days later, police found the body of Neverson's girlfriend, Donna Davis, 34, in a vacant lot. Police believe she was kidnapped and shot dead after breaking up with him.

The muscular 6-foot-2 suspect vanished for four months, then turned up with a gun, demanding to see his 2-year-old daughter, the feds say. By the time the cops found out, he was in the wind again. U.S. marshals, who put him on the most-wanted list in 2004, suspect he may have returned to Trinidad and could be supporting himself as a bouncer or by buying and selling cars.

Meanwhile, his New York relatives live in fear.

"I can never totally be safe," Akim Neverson, his nephew, told the New York Post in 2010. "When I'm walking, and it's dark or I'm in a crowd of people, I have to keep an extra eye out. I can't really ever be comfortable knowing he's out there."

Keep reading on usnews >>

Corporate Socialism

By Laika 

www.cosmosmith.com

Well, who would've imagined... now we have Republicans and Democrats joining hands in a great demonstration of bipartisanship and amazingly quick action by the usually gridlocked Congress... for what? Corporate Socialism in America! Working folks lose their jobs (outsourced abroad), can't pay their mortgages, lose their homes, and its tough luck. Big creditors on Wall Street get a $700 billion bail-out courtesy of the taxpayers. I thought capitalism was supposed to be about natural market forces, smart businessmen making sound investments and being rewarded with profits that trickle down... creating jobs, paying wages, stimulating consumer spending.... Now we have the federal government subsidizing failed financial institutions. With this $700 billion bail-out on top of the Iraq war debt, my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will all be paying for it with their taxes (if the whole house of cards does not come tumbling down soon). Why the sudden urgency, you might ask? Hmmm... the election in six weeks might have something to do with it, maybe?  At last we have something liberals and conservatives can agree on.  Bye bye Free Market Capitalism; hello Corporate Socialism.

Obama’s Most Dishonest State of the Union Address

(L-R) NSC Executive Secretary Nate Tibbits, Former Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, President Barack Obama, and Presidential Speechwriter Cody Keenan as they edit his remarks before addressing an audience at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Mich., Feb. 10, 2011. (Pete Souza /Landov (file))/ www.thedailybeast.com

frontpagemag

By Daniel Greenfield

In 1986, at the closing session of the Communist Party shindig in the Karl Marx Theater in Havana, Castro had declared, “Let no one think that what I have here is a lengthy speech; it is the party’s program.” He then went on to speak for 7 hours and 10 minutes.

Obama’s ridiculous 6600-word marathon is also not a lengthy speech; it is the party’s program. The professional flatterers and fawners in the media have long since given up describing the teleprompter-in-chief as a talented speaker. These days Obama gives speeches that not only sound like they were read from a teleprompter, but also written by a teleprompter.

The obscene performance began with a celebration of an economic recovery that exists only in Washington, D.C., which has grown fat on the money that its corrupt political interests have stolen from the rest of the country, and ended by comparing a woman waiting in line to vote for him with a police officer who risked his life to stop a mad gunman.

And in between these two cynical and ugly bookends was a dog’s dinner of out of control spending, class warfare and more bad ideas than even Castro could have come up with in seven hours.

As out of touch with the rest of the country as if he were speaking at the Karl Marx Theater in Havana, Obama claimed that spending was under control, the national debt was no longer a problem, the war in Afghanistan had been won, the economic recovery was here, unemployment was fading and Al Qaeda was a shadow of its former self.

Obama described the “sequester” that he had come up with as “a really bad idea” and blamed it on Congress. He took credit for the oil production that he had fought every step of the way and blamed Hurricane Sandy on global warming; a claim that even few global warming researchers are willing to make.

There were more calls to fix all those broken bridges, which he had somehow been unable to fix for four years, despite running trillion dollar deficits. And finally a proposal to really help the economy take off by legalizing 11 million illegal aliens and thereby doubling the unemployment rate in a single year.

Any Diogenes in the audience taking it upon himself to shout “liar” at every lie would have worn out his vocal chords in a matter of minutes.

Like most bad speakers, Obama has been reduced to relying on props. And since he isn’t allowed to bring a slideshow, the props are his designated victims.

“Gabby Giffords deserves a vote,” Obama insisted toward the end of his Castroesque word jumble of Soak-the-Rich, Ban-the-Guns and Help-the-Poor-by-Taking-Away-their-Jobs.  “The families of Newtown deserve a vote.”

They have a vote, of course, but what he really meant is that they should have not only a vote, but a veto on account of their moral supremacy as official victims. Before Havana-on-the-Potomac got started, one of the designated victims from three years ago came forward to say that Obama had betrayed her. But that’s also part of the program. The designated victim of today is Obama’s victim of tomorrow.

The people that Obama promises to help today will be put out of work by him tomorrow.

During the word marathon, victims come in handy as human touches in the middle of Obama’s latest expensive technocratic gimmick, but as soon as Obama gets what he wants, they’re yesterday’s news. And there are always gimmicks; whether it’s trading hubs with 3D printers or an Energy Security Trust.

With the 2013 State of the Union address, Obama finally discovered his inner Castro. Anyone who took part in a drinking game based around class warfare would have been under the table by the 2000^th word as Obama dressed up all of his proposals with scarecrows made out of the rich.

Obama announced that he was in favor of Medicare cuts, further cuts than those already made by ObamaCare, but immediately tried to hide them by assuring his audience that the “wealthiest seniors” would have to pay more. Whenever any unpopular proposal was mentioned, the class warfare came out as a cheap distraction. And when the strawman in a top hat and monocle wouldn’t do, the leader of the least transparent administration brought out the euphemisms.

“We’ll bring down costs by changing the way our government pays for Medicare,” Obama said, “because our medical bills shouldn’t be based on the number of tests ordered or days spent in the hospital – they should be based on the quality of care that our seniors receive.” This is one of those ominous things that sound reassuring if you don’t think about them.

Hospitals charge based on expenses. If a hospital isn’t reimbursed for a test, it stops ordering it. If it isn’t reimbursed for a day spent in the hospital, it stops admitting Medicare patients. Quality of care is a euphemism for cutting Medicare expenses by forcing hospitals to reduce admissions through fines and denial of reimbursements. That not only cuts Medicare expenses directly, it also cuts them indirectly by killing senior citizens.

“Tonight, let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour,” he declared, as if wages could be somehow separated from the rest of the economy without affecting the cost of living and the existence of those low-paying jobs that keep people from joining the masses of the unemployed.

Raising the minimum wage is just another scam. A tasty treat that looks good up front but leads to more lost jobs and a higher cost of living. Tethering minimum wage to the cost of living is like trying to lift yourself up off the ground by your own belt.

“We can say with confidence that America will complete its mission in Afghanistan, and achieve our objective of defeating the core of al Qaeda,” Obama bragged. The core of Al Qaeda had not been located in Afghanistan at any time during his administration, which made it that much easier to defeat.

While Obama lost the War in Afghanistan to the Taliban and will “complete the mission” by retreating and letting them have the country, Al Qaeda has spread across North Africa and came within a hair of taking over Mali.

North Korea had detonated a nuclear weapon and Obama warned its regime that successfully testing nuclear weapons “will only isolate them further”… except to countries like Iran and Pakistan looking to buy their nuclear technology.

Obama carefully tiptoed away from his disaster in Egypt, issued some more toothless warnings to Iran and Syria, and then having completed the demonstration of his international impotence, turned to the inevitable assault on the Bill of Rights.

And then finally the leader who has refused to be constrained by the Constitution, by any law or limitation, by the rights of others or by the laws of economics, by the truth or by any sense of shame, declared that, “this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations; that our rights are wrapped up in the rights of others.”

The man who had rejected all obligations and bankrupted the United States for generations to come, who had cut healthcare for seniors and destroyed the economic future of the young, concluded his speech with the same cynicism and dishonesty with which he had begun it.

“Our conscience, a communist spirit, and a revolutionary vocation and will, were, are and will continue to be a 10,000 times more powerful than money,” Castro had declared at the end of his speech in 1986. In less than 15 years, history proved him thoroughly wrong. It will take even less time than that for history to disprove Hussein.

Obama pledge to spend without adding 'dime' to deficit draws skepticism

foxnews

State of the Union addresses are usually packed with promises and lofty goals. But President Obama's pledge Tuesday night to push a raft of spending proposals without adding "a single dime" to the deficit appeared to make little sense to Republicans.
"Under President Obama, the national debt has increased by 58.6 trillion dimes," a video swiftly released by the Republican National Committee reminded viewers.
The video showed clip after clip of Obama vowing in past addresses that his proposals would be paid for. The State of the Union address was the latest installment.
Obama said Tuesday his proposals to fuel economic growth are "fully paid for" and added: "Nothing I'm proposing tonight should increase our deficit by a single dime."
Ultimately, it's difficult to pin down whether any particular spending program is paid for. One proposal may be offset with cuts or tax increases elsewhere in the budget. But then other programs in turn do not get paid for, helping result in $1 trillion-plus deficits over the last four years.
Obama did not get into many specifics Tuesday night on how his ideas -- should the Republican-controlled House even bring them to a vote -- would be offset, other than by calls to close tax loopholes and, in at least one case, attract some private capital.
That program was called the "Partnership to Rebuild America," which Obama said would attract private dollars to upgrade ports and modernize pipelines and schools. He also, though, proposed a "fix-it-first" program to put Americans to work on "urgent repairs" like structurally deficient bridges across the country. And he reiterated support for the previously proposed American Jobs Act, which included $50 billion in infrastructure spending. Both those would use taxpayer dollars.
To Republicans, infrastructure spending is code for more stimulus, which is precisely what House Speaker John Boehner labeled it in a statement Tuesday night. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who delivered the GOP response, said Obama's solution "to virtually every problem we face is for Washington to tax more, borrow more and spend more."
Obama's proposals went beyond roads and bridges to include the creation of "manufacturing hubs" across America.
He called for more "investments" in science and technology, as well as legislation to address climate change and policies to generate more clean energy. In the past, the latter has translated to subsidies for alternative energy companies.
And the president called for legislation to give homeowners a chance to refinance their mortgages and announced a policy to "reward schools that develop new partnerships with colleges and employers."
The bulk of these proposals would cost money, though how much is unclear, as is how they would be offset.
Obama in his speech, though, defended and promoted these "investments" and, while stressing the need to rein in the budget, said austerity in itself cannot be Washington's goal.
"Most of us agree that a plan to reduce the deficit must be part of our agenda. But let's be clear: deficit reduction alone is not an economic plan," Obama said.
Regardless of whether Obama's proposals add to the deficit, he is sure to face a mixed reception in putting the emphasis on new government programs when many -- particularly House Republicans -- are more interested in paring back the spending out of Washington. Some argue this could even help the economy by sending a signal that the federal government is at last tackling the budget deficit.
Obama acknowledged Tuesday that the "biggest driver" of long-term debt is the rising cost of health care. He said America "must embrace the need for modest reforms" but "we can't ask senior citizens and working families to shoulder the entire burden of deficit reduction while asking nothing more from the wealthiest and the most powerful."
He called for a "balanced approached" to closing the deficit that includes cuts and tax increases, though Republicans say the debate over tax hikes is over.
He said he would back some Medicare reforms that reduce subsidies to prescription drug companies and "ask more from the wealthiest seniors."
The president, while spending the bulk of his address on economic and budget issues, was perhaps most impassioned when talking about gun legislation. With many victims of gun violence and their families in the audience Tuesday night, Obama claimed broad support for strengthened background checks and said a range of measures -- like an assault-weapons ban and a ban on high-capacity magazines -- should get a vote in Congress.
"Gabby Giffords deserves a vote. The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote," Obama said.
The president also vowed to sign immigration legislation that achieves certain goals -- like a "responsible pathway to earned citizenship." The immigration legislation may be easier to achieve than any comprehensive gun regulation package, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are already working on the framework for an immigration bill.
On foreign policy, the president declared Tuesday that he would withdraw 34,000 troops from Afghanistan over the next year, which represents about half the force in the country now.
The president spoke Tuesday as the economy showed mixed signs of recovery. While hiring has picked up since the sluggish 2009-2010 period, the unemployment rate ticked up again last month. While the stock market appears to be steadily improving, economic growth remains tepid -- the Commerce Department estimates the economy actually shrank by .1 percent at the end of 2012.
But Obama and the rest of Washington are facing a balancing act, with another looming deadline demanding that Washington take serious steps to address the federal deficit.
Automatic spending cuts are poised to hit March 1 unless a deal is reached to replace them. Some Republicans are talking about letting the cuts simply take effect, though the Pentagon will bear the brunt of the hit. Other Republicans want to replace the scheduled cuts with a separate package of cuts.
Obama, to the chagrin of Republicans, wants to include tax increases in any package. He has also urged Congress to draft a short-term bill if no deal can be reached by March 1. Republican leaders have largely bristled at this demand.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/13/obama-pledge-to-spend-without-adding-dime-to-deficit-draws-skepticism/#ixzz2KnKUhVjx

Inside the State of the Union

nbcnews

By M. Alex Johnson, staff writer, NBC News

Facts and figures from President Barack Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday night:

Speech statisticsThe president spoke for about an hour. The prepared text clocked in at 6,432 words, which might seem like a lot, but it's nowhere near President Harry Truman's record of more than 25,000 words in 1946. 

Obama used 1,737 different words. Here are some comparisons:

• America(n)(s): 54; Afghanistan: 4; Africa: 2; Europe(ean): 2
• our: 145; we: 122; I: 33; my: 12
• job(s): 43; energy: 18; family(ies): 18; tax(es)/taxpayer(s): 17; education: 14; economy: 13 
• deficit: 10; drone(s): 0

How many times was the president interrupted by applause?
79 by NBC News' unofficial count.

Who was missing? 
Tradition dictates that one Cabinet member skip the speech, to run the government in the event of a catastrophe. This year, that duty fell to Energy Secretary Steven Chu. Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito also weren't in attendance. 

Guests of the First Lady 
Among those joining Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, wife of the vice president, in the gallery were:

• Marine Sgt. Sheena Adams, recipient of the Combat Action Ribbon and the Navy and Marine Corp Achievement Medal after her deployment in Afghanistan September 2010 to April 2011
• Alan Aleman of Las Vegas, an undocumented resident from Mexico and activist for the DREAM Act
• Tim Cook, chief executive of Apple Inc.
• Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton and Nathaniel A. Pendleton Sr. of Chicago, parents of Hadiya Pendleton, who was slain last month after she performed at the president's inauguration.
• Bobak Ferdowsi, flight director of the Mars Curiosity Rover (aka "Mohawk Guy").
• Tracey Hepner, co-founder of the Military Partners and Families Coalition; and Kaitlin Roig, a first-grade teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Full list: A diverse guest list for State of the Union 

What were those green ribbons about?
Many lawmakers and others, including Tony Bennett, sported green ribbons in honor of the victims of the December shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

What was the deal with Joe Biden's glasses?
Aides said the vice president scratched his left eye with a contact lens, leaving it irritated and red.