Independent voices from the TWT Communities

It is a well-known axiom of presidential politics that when things aren't going well at home, chief executives go abroad.

President Obama bristled at comparisons with the Bush administration in his first interview addressing the National Security Agency’s broad gathering of data about Americans’ phone calls and online communications.

Former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers says that while he still likes President Obama personally, he deserves "a failing grade" on the presidency and should be tried for war crimes.

A private jet with former President George W. Bush on board made an emergency landing Saturday night.
Our constitutional republic is under attack. It has been wounded by the rise of the national surveillance state. This is the real meaning of the explosive leaks from former intelligence employee Edward Snowden.

As Congress and the White House pasted together and passed the so-called Patriot Act in the aftermath of the 2001 attack on the New York World Trade Center, a few conservatives raised questions about the degree to which the nation seemed ready "to trade liberty for security."

Former Rep. Peter Hoekstra, who was chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, recalls a cryptic telephone call from the White House in August 2004: "Come on over. We've got something to tell you."

It was revealed that millions of innocent Americans have been subjected to NSA wiretaps as part of secret program to uncover terrorists plots. Secretary of State John F. Kerry said that the U.S. would sign an international arms treaty. On the international stage, China is countering U.S. military strategy in Asia by arming western hemisphere states. Here’s a recap, or wrap, of the week that was from The Washington Times.

Noted political writer Edward Klein claims in his latest book that former President Bill Clinton dismissed President Obama as inept and incapable of performing the duties of the White House — but that he formed a secret deal to give him an endorsement for office anyway.

President Obama wants to be involved in drafting the curriculum in our local schools. It's part of an initiative called "Common Core," the brainchild of state educational bureaucrats crying out for more centralization.

Former IRS Commissioner Douglas H. Shulman's testimony that he deliberately kept himself in the dark about the tax service's brewing scandal runs counter to the responsibilities of agency heads regardless of whether they are political appointees, some government analysts said.
Ever since Barack Obama was nominated in 2008 as the Democratic candidate for the president of the United States, his staunchest critics have implied that he had the makings of a dictator.

With White House scandals dominating each news cycle, President Obama's newly minted media critics may prefer to ignore their own culpability in creating this unfolding debacle.

Bill Press, a former California Democratic Party chairman and current liberal talk show radio host, said U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder ought to be fired over The Associated Press phone record scandal.

The revelation that the U.S. government used secret subpoenas to pry into Associated Press reporters’ phone records triggered two contradictory reactions in the political world.
Top officials from the Obama and Bush administrations say the government's newly exposed secret surveillance programs have been essential to disrupting terrorist plots and have not infringed on Americans' civil liberties.
He said that if the NSA picks up a telephone number for a terrorist in Pakistan's tribal areas, an al Qaeda hotbed, it can use the database of phone calls to create a history.
Ex-insider: Prism use like 'Bush on steroids'; Hoekstra still backs NSA intel program →