The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news.
As he struggles to find momentum in his second term, President Obama is setting a dubious record for the slowest pace in assembling a new Cabinet.
Political correctness is always petty, often infuriating, and sometimes does no permanent harm. But occasionally it's a threat to the nation's security. When a paperclip general at the Pentagon surrenders to the enemy at the first sound of the popguns, the harm can be permanent.
The website where hackers had published what it said were credit reports for Michelle Obama, the attorney general, CIA director, FBI director and other politicians and celebrities has been shut down by Russian Internet officials. The site has been inaccessible since late Tuesday.
Human rights groups are applauding reports that the White House is poised to shift the CIA's drone program to the Defense Department as a positive sign but say more clarity is still needed about the targeted killings.
Nobody drones on like a U.S. senator and nobody loves the sound of his raspy voice like a U.S. senator. Rand Paul, the freshman from Kentucky who stars in the bad dreams of every Republican geezer in town, talked for almost 13 hours on the Senate floor this week to delay a confirmation vote on John O. Brennan as director of the CIA, and earned only the scorn of the geezers.
Concerned about the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles on U.S. soil, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., spoke unrelenting for 13 straight hours on the Senate floor as he filibustered the nomination of John Brennan to be CIA director. But a 24-word tweet from his official Twitter account is what caught the attention of truth watchers this week.
One of the hopeful outcomes of the Senate confirmation hearings for John Brennan to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency and Chuck Hagel to be the secretary of Defense was to gain some concrete answers to the Benghazi tragedy. So far, though, no additional useful information has been released. Further, the testimony of former Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey on Feb. 7 before the Senate Armed Services Committee only raised more questions. The cloud of a cover-up continues.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul's filibuster against John Brennan's appointment to the CIA has gained national applause, and criticism, but one person who is standing with the senator on the president's drone program is a very unlikely ally — Van Jones.
