Feedzilla

Tim Tebow Not Worried About Future With Patriots

BOSTON (CBS) — Tim Tebow once again had his ups and downs on Thursday night, throwing two touchdowns but also throwing an interception and getting sacked four times. His spot on the roster, from an outside perspective, seems to be anything but a guarantee.

However, despite the never-ending debate about Tebow’s spot on the Patriots, the 26-year-old quarterback said he isn’t worried about his future.

“I’m blessed because of my faith, because you don’t have to worry about the future, because I know who holds my future,” Tebow said. “A lot of times people use that as a cliche, but it’s something I try to live by. It really gives you a lot of peace in whatever circumstance you’re in.”
Tebow’s final preseason stats weren’t great. He finished 11-for-30 (36.7 percent) for 145 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions while getting sacked four times for a loss of 48 yards. He rushed for 91 yards on 16 carries, for a 5.7-yard average.
While head coach Bill Belichick would not specifically talk about the traits that may earn Tebow a roster spot, the quarterback made his case after the preseason victory when asked what he can bring to the team.
“Someone that will work hard, who loves the game of football, who will always – hopefully, Lord willing — have a great attitude, great work ethic and someone that tries to be an encourager in here.”

Donald Rumsfeld to White House: Justify Syria attack



Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says the Obama administration has not yet justified an attack on Syria.
“There really hasn’t been any indication from the administration as to what our national interest is with respect to this particular situation,” Rumsfeld told Fox News’s Neil Cavuto on Wednesday.

“If you think of what’s really important in that region, it’s two things,” he added. “It’s Iran’s nuclear program and the relationship between Iran and Syria, the Assad regime, with respect to funding terrorists that go around killing innocent men, women and children including Americans.”

Asked what he thinks China and Russia’s response may be — both countries have said the U.S. must abide by international law, wait for the United Nations chemical probe results, and should not bypass the U.N. Security Council — Rumsfeld replied, “Well, it’s hard to know.”

“I mean there’s no question that each of those two countries, the People’s Republic of China and Russia, have leaders that are fundamentally opposed to our values and our interests,” he said.

Under President Barack Obama, Rumsfeld said the U.S. is in “withdrawal mode, an apology mode,” and that “vacuum we’ve created is being filled by people who don’t have our values or our interest, and that gives China and Russia an opportunity to do things that are fundamentally against what we as a country and the American people would prefer to have happen.”


Rumsfeld also said Secretary of State John Kerry “has been dealt a pretty bad hand” thanks to Obama’s administration and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s choices over the past four years, calling it “a complicated situation.”


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/donald-rumsfeld-syria-crisis-96024.html#ixzz2dOQ3r9eU

Obama hits pause on U.S. action in face of crippling cyber strikes from Syria, Iran

By Shaun Waterman

Syria and its ally Iran have been building cyberattack capabilities for years and soon might have a chance to use their skills in a hot war for the first time.

Former U.S. officials and cybersecurity scholars say Syria has a demonstrated cyberattack capability and could retaliate against anticipated Western military strikes against Syria for its suspected chemical weapons attack against civilians in the country’s 2-year-old civil war.

“It’s foreseeable that [Syrian] state-sponsored or state-sympathetic hackers could seek to retaliate” against U.S., Israeli or Western interests, Michael Chertoff, a former secretary of Homeland Security, told The Washington Times on Wednesday.

“We have already seen regional cyberactors, such as the Syrian Electronic Army, conduct attacks on U.S. targets,” added Rep. James R. Langevin, Rhode Island Democrat and a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

The Syrian Electronic Army has successfully attacked computer networks used by U.S. media outlets — hacking the Twitter account of The Associated Press this year and mostly knocking The New York Times website offline for 20 hours Tuesday and Wednesday.
**FILE** A cadet works Feb. 20, 2013, at a large computer display inside a classroom at the U.S. Air Force Academy's Center for Cyberspace Research in Colorado Springs, Colo., where cyber warfare is taught. The U.S. service academies are ramping up efforts to groom a new breed of cyberspace warriors to confront increasing threats to the nation's military and civilian computer networks that control everything from electrical power grids to the banking system. (Associated Press) **FILE** A cadet works Feb. 20, 2013, at a large computer display ... more >
Attackers penetrated the company that manages the paper’s Internet domain, NYTimes.com, according to reports in the computer security trade press.

Hackers can relatively easily hide their tracks from all but the most extensive and time-consuming forensic efforts, but the Syrian Electronic Army has publicly claimed these attacks. In online postings, the group of hacker activists, or “hacktivists,” claim to be motivated by Syrian patriotism and to act independently of the regime in Damascus.

“It can be difficult to distinguish between hackers who are sympathetic to a regime and those directly [state] sponsored or controlled,” said Mr. Chertoff, co-founder and chairman of the Chertoff Group, a global security advisory firm.


Islamic hackers whom U.S. officials have linked to Iran have launched a series of increasingly powerful cyberattacks against the websites of major U.S. banks for almost a year.

Large U.S. financial institutions probably have the best cybersecurity of any nongovernmental entity, yet their websites have been driven offline by repeated attacks.

A self-described hacktivist group called Izad din al Qassam has claimed responsibility for the attacks, which they announce in advance.

The group says the attacks are designed to punish the United States for an Internet video, “Innocence of Muslims,” made by an Egyptian-American Coptic Christian, which portrays Islam’s Prophet Muhammad as a killer and pedophile. The Obama administration tried to blame the video for the terrorist attack last year at a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

But the kind of cyberattack that most alarms national security specialists took place a year ago and was aimed at the Saudi Arabian state oil company, Aramco.

A virus called Shamoon infected the company’s computer network and wiped data from more than 30,000 computers, effectively destroying all the information on the system.

A similar attack on a bank could destroy digital records of customer accounts.

Hackers also have demonstrated that they could take over computer control systems that operate chemical, electrical and water and sewage treatment plants. They also can hack into transportation networks.

“An aggressor nation or extremist group could gain control of critical switches and derail passenger trains, or trains loaded with lethal chemicals,” Leon E. Panetta, then CIA director, warned in a speech in New York last year.

“They could contaminate the water supply in major cities or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country.”
Specialists doubt that the Syrian Electronic Army has that kind of advanced capability, but it is always hard to tell, said Timothy Sample, who is a vice president at technology contractor Battelle Inc., which does cybersecurity work for U.S. intelligence and defense agencies and civilian clients.

“The barriers to entry for these kinds of capabilities are very low,” he said, adding that it is easy to buy cyberattack tools and hire hackers on the black market.

“It would be dangerous to rely on the proposition that any given attacker lacks a particular skill,” Mr. Sample added.
Cyberforensic specialists have documented the Syrian Electronic Army’s historic links to a computer society founded years ago by Syrian President Bashar Assad. The British Guardian newspaper has reported that the group is funded by Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of Mr. Assad’s and the owner of SyriaTel, a telecommunications and Internet service provider.
Front groups such as the Syrian Electronic Army still provide states with so-called plausible deniability, Mr. Chertoff said.

“Even if it is evident that Syria is behind an attack, they can deny it. We saw that in Estonia,” he said.

In 2007, in the midst of a bitter diplomatic dispute between Estonia and Russia, the small Baltic nation suffered a series of huge cyberattacks that knocked banks, government websites and other vital infrastructure offline. The attacks came from Internet addresses in Russia and were coordinated on public bulletin boards run by hackers and nationalist groups, but the Russian government denied any involvement.

Mr. Chertoff said U.S. policymakers were used to such dilemmas.

“There are often times we know [who has attacked us], but we can’t publicly prove it without revealing intelligence sources and methods. You have to decide whether to act on the basis of evidence you cannot reveal,” he said.
Any U.S. response to a Syrian attack might well not be visible, said Adam M. Segal, a cybersecurity scholar with the Council on Foreign Relations.

U.S. Cyber Command has said it has the ability reach back into attackers’ networks and “prevent these [kinds of] attacks from their source,” said Mr. Segal, “essentially doing defense through offense.”

Cyberattacks are now “an integral part of modern warfare,” said Mr. Langevin, who has led efforts in Congress to pass legislation designed to shore up the nation’s cyberdefenses.

“This is going to be a lingering problem,” Mr. Chertoff said.


Read more: 
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/28/syria-iran-capable-of-launching-a-cyberwar/#ixzz2dOG0ZNAh 
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

@washtimes on Twitter

The Odd Duck: Beardless Alan Joins 'Dynasty' Show


WEST MONROE, La. -- Today Duck Commander, the Robertson family duck call business made famous by A&E's hit reality show "Duck Dynasty," is more of an empire.

But in the beginning Phil Robertson made his duck calls in his backwoods Louisiana backyard. And as the oldest son, Alan Robertson served as one of his dad's first employees.


"We made everything in there," Alan said, pointing into an old shed behind his dad's house. "There used to be an old band saw out back and I used to cut calls in half. I was little, I was 12 years old, I mean, OSHA, we didn't know what OSHA was in those days."

Alan then gestured toward an old red water shed with rows of nails stuck in it.

"This is kind of one of the last things left from the old days," he explained. "See these nails here - we used to hang duck calls on these nails."

Alan Joins Season 4

Although he's the oldest brother, fans of "Duck Dynasty" probably didn't know he existed until now. Alan debuted on the show's Season 4 premiere to a record-breaking audience. Nearly 12 million people watched, making it the largest audience ever for a nonfiction show on cable.

Alan likes to joke that he's responsible for the ratings bump, but in the Robertson family, all glory goes to God.


The day after the record-breaking premiere, Alan led dozens of Duck Commander employees in the company's weekly devotion. The workers show up an hour early for the weekly ritual. 

"Duck Dynasty" funny man John Godwin opened the group in prayer.

"Thank you so much for the cross and your grace and your mercy and we praise His name. Amen," he prayed.

The first time John Godwin used a Duck Commander duck call he thought it sounded awful. Hear him tell the story and about the first time he met Phil Robertson:

With his wife Lisa beside him and his daughter Alexis across from him (she and her husband work for Duck Commander, too), Alan preached about God's love, reading from 1 Corinthians 13.

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not loved, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal," he quoted the passage.

"Without love we're in serious trouble right?" he went on to say.

A Bumpy Spiritual Road

It's something he knows well. Before rejoining Duck Commander a year ago, Alan pastored White's Ferry Road Church of Christ for more than 20 years. But as a young man he never dreamed he'd become a minister.

"My high school years were just terrible and it was all a secret life- running around and drinking and cutting up," he said. "So I was at the worst possible place - I was hiding in plain sight. I was in the church but I wasn't a Christian. I wasn't living for Christ."


After he graduated, Phil told him he either had to shape up or move out so he wouldn't be a bad influence on his younger brothers. Alan moved out, relocating to New Orleans where he found more trouble.

His life got so bad that it scared him straight and after about a year he moved back home. He made a commitment to follow Jesus Christ and Phil baptized him in the river behind their house. 

The 'Feather' and the 'Sledgehammer'

Since then Alan estimates the Robertson men have used the same water to baptize at least a thousand others. Now most weekends Alan and his dad travel the country together preaching the Gospel.  

"I call us the feather and the sledge hammer," Alan told CBN News. "I come in and I get people laughing. I get their tickle bone because I'm kind of the humor guy.

"And then dad comes in with a sledgehammer - boom! - you know, 'This is what God has done for you. This is what our nation needs. Boom, boom, boom'" he continued.

At Duck Commander Headquarters Alan shares an office with his wife, Lisa, who also works for the business. The couple's daughters and their husbands do, too.

Each day hundreds of requests come in for a family member to speak or appear at an event.

"We're on the telephone; we're working schedules for the family," Alan explained.

They also greet fans. While the other Robertson's travel to different appearances, Alan and Lisa serve as family ambassadors.

Alan and Lisa talk about the privilege they have ministering to people who visit Duck Commander headquarters:

Now that Alan and Lisa will be appearing on Duck Dynasty, they can expect a lot more attention.

Alan's daughter, Alexis, said she thinks her dad felt a little left out and said she's glad he's back with the family business and on the show.

"They know what they're getting into because they've seen it with the brother's," she said. "But I think they are still going to be shocked whenever everywhere they go people know who they are."

Such a Time as This

"Alan is just a natural fit anyway," Godwin said. "He's such a people person, you know, keep us grounded and keep everybody else grounded."

"I really feel like God had prepared us for such a moment at this," Alan said, "And when America needs some family to say, 'Hey, we can make mistakes, you know, we can come from nothing - we can have all these things now, but ultimately none of it matters except that we're saved and we're going to be in heaven forever with Christ.'"

Lisa added, "And Kay always says, too, that, she says that whenever she prays she says if the money or the fame or anything ever takes us away from Christ, then take it all away and leave us with nothing. You know, because when we're with nothing, we've got everything with Christ."

About That Beard…

Alan's brothers have made unruly facial hair fashionable. In fact, Alan's clean cut look makes him the odd duck in the family, but don't expect him to conform.

"I figure you need to know what they look like underneath so a lot of times I'll go out in a crowd and say, 'What about if I did this (he covers up his mouth and chin as though he has a beard)?' And people say, 'Oh, that's more like it' 'cause they get the vision and they can tell I belong to the family," he said.

Plus, he said, "I don't want to get stuck with that look, I mean, are you kidding me?"

And perhaps the best reason: his wife likes him clean shaven.

"You know, when there's things crawling out of your beard or whenever you've got food left from lunch or dinner, I don't know, that just kind of grosses me out," she said.

But don't be fooled by Alan's smooth face. He loves the outdoors as much as his rugged-looking brothers. Deep in the Robertson family's hunting land Alan couldn't wait to show us one of the family's nearly 80 duck blinds.

"We've solved more of the world's problems in a duck blind than any other place," he said.

Unlike the solitude of deer hunting, Alan said he likes hunting ducks because he gets to cut up while catching his dinner.

"It's like this adrenaline surge and everybody's up and it's like pow, pow, pow, boom, boom, boom. Then we see what we got and then Si starts claiming everybody's ducks," he said.



Alan Robertson's son in law, Jay, does his best impression of Uncle Si.  Jay is so good at impersonating Si he's narrating the audio version of Si's book Si-chology:

A Leap of Faith

Both Alan and Lisa took a leap of faith leaving their church, but they see their new role with the popular family business and reality show as a new worldwide ministry.

"To have a great church is good," Lisa said. "But there is people out there that's not ever going to darken the doors that we have here. And they may not ever darken the doors of any church building."

"And so," she continued, "if we can give them a little taste of Christianity, a little taste of God, but in a fun way to tell them that just because you are a Christian doesn't mean that you can't have loads of fun and laugh all the time and just enjoy what God's given you."

"We're fairly young," Alan said. "If God gives us a lot more years on the earth who knows where we're gonna go from there in terms of what we're gonna do?"

U.S. Soldier Guilty of Murder for Fort Hood Shootings


Army Maj. Nidal Hasan was convicted Friday in the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, a shocking assault against American troops at home by one of their own who said he opened fire on fellow soldiers to protect Muslim insurgents abroad.
The Army psychiatrist acknowledged carrying out the attack in a crowded waiting room where unarmed troops were making final preparations to deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq. Thirteen people were killed and more than 30 wounded.
Because Hasan never denied his actions, the court-martial was always less about a conviction than it was about ensuring he received the death penalty. From the beginning of the case, the federal government has sought to execute Hasan, believing that any sentence short of a lethal injection would deprive the military and the families of the dead of the justice they have sought for nearly four years.
A jury of 13 high-ranking military officers reached a unanimous guilty verdict in about seven hours. In the next phase of the trial, they must all agree to give Hasan the death penalty before he can be sent to the military's death row, which has just five other prisoners. If they do not agree, the 42-year-old could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Hasan, a Virginia-born Muslim, said the attack was a jihad against U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He bristled when the trial judge, Col. Tara Osborn, suggested the shooting rampage could have been avoided were it not for a spontaneous flash of anger.
"It wasn't done under the heat of sudden passion," Hasan said before jurors began deliberating. "There was adequate provocation — that these were deploying soldiers that were going to engage in an illegal war."
All but one of the dead were soldiers, including a pregnant private who curled on the floor and pleaded for her baby's life.
The sentencing phase is expected to begin with more testimony from survivors of the attack inside an Army medical center where soldiers were waiting in long lines to receive immunizations and medical clearance for deployment.
About 50 soldiers and civilians testified of hearing someone scream "Allahu akbar!" — Arabic for "God is great!" — and seeing a man in Army camouflage open fire. Many identified Hasan as the shooter and recalled his handgun's red and green laser sights piercing a room made dark with gun smoke.
Hasan, who acted as his own attorney, began the trial by telling jurors he was the gunman. But he said little else over the next three weeks, which convinced his court-appointed standby lawyers that Hasan's only goal was to get a death sentence.
As the trial progressed, those suspicions grew. The military called nearly 90 witnesses, but Hasan rested his case without calling a single person to testify in his defense and made no closing argument. Yet he leaked documents during the trial to journalists that revealed him telling military mental health workers that he could "still be a martyr" if executed.
Death sentences are rare in the military and trigger automatic appeals that take decades play out. Among the final barriers to execution is authorization from the president. No American soldier has been executed since 1961.
Hasan spent weeks planning the Nov. 5, 2009, attack. His preparation included buying the handgun and videotaping a sales clerk showing him how to change the magazine.
Hasan spent weeks planning the Nov. 5, 2009, attack. His preparation included buying the handgun and videotaping a sales clerk showing him how to change the magazine.
He later plunked down $10 at a gun range outside Austin and asked for pointers on how to reload with speed and precision. An instructor said he told Hasan to practice while watching TV or sitting on his couch with the lights off.
When the time came, Hasan stuffed paper towels in the pockets of his cargo pants to muffle the rattling of extra ammo and avoid arousing suspicion. Soldiers testified that Hasan's rapid reloading made it all but impossible to stop the shooting. Investigators recovered 146 shell casings inside the medical building and dozens more outside, where Hasan shot at the backs of soldiers fleeing toward the parking lot.
The first person to charge Hasan, a civilian doctor, was shot dead while wielding a chair. Another soldier who ran at him with a table was stopped upon being shot in the hand.
Chief Warrant Officer Christopher Royal saw an opening after hearing the distinct clicking of the gun's chamber emptying. But he slipped on a puddle of blood while starting a sprint toward Hasan. He was shot in the back.
Tight security blanketed the trial. The courthouse was made into a fortress insulated by a 20-foot cushion of blast-absorbing blockades, plus an outer perimeter of shipping containers stacked three high. A helicopter ferried Hasan back and forth each day. The small courtroom was guarded by soldiers carrying high-powered rifles.
In court, Hasan never played the role of an angry extremist. He didn't get agitated or raise his voice. He addressed Osborn as "ma'am" and occasionally whispered "thank you" when prosecutors, in accordance with the rules of admitting evidence, handed Hasan red pill bottles that rattled with bullet fragments removed from those who were shot.
His muted presence was a contrast to the spectacles staged by other unapologetic jihadists in U.S. courts. Terrorist conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui disrupted his 2006 sentencing for the Sept. 11 attacks multiple times with outbursts, was ejected several times and once proclaimed, "I am al-Qaida!"
Prosecutors never charged Hasan as a terrorist — an omission that still galls family members of the slain and survivors, some of whom have sued the U.S. government over missing the warning signs of Hasan's views before the attack.
———
Associated Press reporter John Mone contributed to this report.

Nielsens: 'Duck Dynasty' trumps 'Dome'


The fourth-season premiere of A&E's "Duck Dynasty" quacked with 11.8 million viewers Wednesday, a new record for a non-fiction cable series. It even beat out top broadcast show, CBS' "Under the Dome."

Ducky. The fourth-season premiere of A&E's Duck Dynasty quacked with 11.8 million viewers Wednesday, a new record for a non-fiction cable series that's also 2.2 million ahead of the series' previous high, set in April.
Elsewhere it was a week of summer finales: HBO'sTrue Blood (4.1 million), ABC's Whodunnit (3.6 million) and NBC's Crossing Lines (2.1 million, all Sunday); TNT's King & Maxwell (3.5 million Monday) and Franklin & Bash (2.2 million Wednesday).
Top 20 shows
1. Duck Dynasty, A&E, 11.77 million
2. Under the Dome, CBS, 10.36 million
3. America's Got Talent (Wednesday, 9 p.m.), NBC, 9.51 million
4. America's Got Talent (Tuesday), NBC, 8.79 million
5. CMA Music Festival, ABC, 8.30 million
6. NCIS, CBS, 8.09 million
7. 60 Minutes, CBS, 7.43 million
8. The Big Bang Theory, CBS, 6.71 million
9. Unforgettable, CBS, 6.57 million
10. Big Brother 15 (Sunday), CBS, 6.48 million
11. NFL on Fox Preseason: Indianapolis at NY Giants, Fox, 6.47 million
12. Big Brother 15 (Thursday), CBS, 6.33 million
13. Big Brother 15 (Wednesday), CBS, 6.17 million
14. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CBS, 6.07 million
15. Two and a Half Men, CBS, 5.88 million
16. America's Got Talent (Wednesday, 8 p.m.), NBC, 5.75 million
17. Dateline, NBC, 5.61 million
18. Rizzoli & Isles, TNT, 5.60 million
19. MasterChef (Wednesday, 9 p.m.), Fox, 5.49 million
20. NCIS: Los Angeles, CBS, 5.44 million
Tops on Twitter
1. Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta (Mon., VH1) 729,782
2. Pretty Little Liars (Tue., ABC Family) 375,589
3. CMA Music Festival (Mon., ABC) 375,443
4. Teen Wolf (Mon., MTV) 326,637
5. WWE SummerSlam (Sun., PPV) 323,969
6. Duck Dynasty (Wed., A&E) 292,786
7. Breaking Bad (Sun., AMC) 190,218
8. Premios Tu Mundo (Thu., Telemundo) 173,721
9. WWE Monday Night Raw (Mon., USA) 161,539
10. Bad Girls Club: Miami (Tue., Oxygen) 155,651
Source: Nielsen's SocialGuide