The talking points are inaccurate and misled the American public....
Their discussion included a request from the White House communications director to her counterpart at the State Department to see if it was possible to arrange for Secretary of State John Kerry to avoid questions during media appearances about Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement. In another instance, a top State Department official assured an attorney for Mrs. Clinton that, contrary to media reports, a department official hadn’t told Congress that Mrs. Clinton erred in using a private email account.
Authorities now believe the bombing that rocked lower Manhattan Saturday night was an act of international terrorism and announced their search for 28-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami. Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary, Josh Earnst, joined MSNBC where he suggested the fight against ISIS is nothing more than...
VP Biden: Changing Rape Culture Will Take All of Us Biden, speaking today at the White House State of Women Summit, made two things abundantly clear: violence against women is an epidemic, and the country is a long, long way from eradicating it.
Obama’s Former Pentagon Chiefs: Military Suffered From Overbearing, Inexperienced White House The U.S. military has been hindered by an overbearing and inexperienced White House under President Barack Obama, according to each of his three former defense secretaries, causing the Pentagon to struggle to carry out operations and make decisions.
The comments are a clear sign the president will continue his go-it-alone approach, which has angered Republicans in Congress.
Aides said Mr. Obama made the decision to remove his defense secretary on Friday after weeks of rising tension over a variety of issues, including what administration officials said were Mr. Hagel’s delays in transferring detainees from the military prison in Guantánamo Bay and a dispute with Susan E. Rice, the national security adviser, over Syria policy.
The Obama administration reportedly concealed the true amount of information compromised by a cyberattack on the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) for several days after the initial disclosure of the hack, according to a published report. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the day after the White House admitted that hackers had breached personnel files, OPM publicly denied that the security clearance forms had been compromised despite receiving information to the contrary from the FBI. The administration did not say that security clearance forms had likely been accessed by the intruders until more than a week had passed. A OPM spokeswoman denied the claims, telling the Journal the agency had been "completely consistent" in its reporting of the data breach.Thursday, Senator McCain grilled Archuleta, attempting to get solid answer about the scope of the OPM data breach. Aruchuelta had few answers and often deferred to colleagues in other federal agencies. On the Sony hacking by China, Archuleta had no answer. On the issue of prescription and other health related data breaches, Archuleta also had no answer. It's almost like there's a theme here...
The debate surrounding congressional approval of “fast track” trade authority has officially taken a swan dive through the looking glass. Obama wants it. House republicans want it. Democrats, for the most part, are ready to vote “no”—their union backers are making them more nervous than the White House ever could—even if it prevents their president from advancing more legacy-building legislation.This afternoon, the AP reports with Nancy Pelosi at the helm, House Democrats sunk President Obama's trade authority hopes. From Yahoo News:
In his new role, Gibbs will lead McDonald's corporate relations group, which manages internal and external communications and government and public affairs. He will lead McDonald's in communicating clear, coordinated messages to internal and external constituencies, enhancing the brand and supporting corporate strategies. Gibbs joins McDonald's from The Incite Agency, a strategic communications advisory firm he co-founded in 2013. Prior to that he held several senior advisory roles in the White House, serving as President Barack Obama's press secretary during his first term, then as senior campaign advisor during his re-election campaign. He will replace Bridget Coffing who announced her retirement earlier this year after 30 years with the company.There's something delicious about this, no?
On Sunday night, an unnamed suspect stepped over a bike rack situated outside the White House fence. The bike racks were installed last year following a high-profile fence-jumping incident that involved an Army veteran armed with a knife. Early Monday morning, another person attempted to walk through a gate while a construction crew were leaving. According to NBC, both men were taken into custody, and the Secret Service has given the all-clear at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The agency has been tight-lipped about the two breaches, which are now under investigation. The suspects have not been named. The bike rack-jumping incident took place at around 11.30pm Sunday near the southwest corner of the presidential residence, reported MyFox DC. The male suspect was arrested and charged with unlawful entry. The breach led to a 30-minute lockdown at the White House. Just before 7am Monday, another man allegedly tried to walk into a pedestrian entrance as construction workers were leaving the area. A Secret Service agent stopped the intruder in his tracks and arrested him after a brief confrontation. The White House was placed on another lockdown that lasted only a few minutes following the second incident.
There was a security scare at the White House early Monday when a two-foot quadcopter drone was found in the middle of the night on the executive mansion's grounds. The U.S. Secret Service is investigating, White House spokesman John Earnest said, but the aircraft did not pose a threat to the building. President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama were on a three-day visit to India, but their daughters, Sasha and Malia, were at the White House. An unnamed law enforcement official told NBC News the drone landed in a tree just after 3 a.m. Monday on the southeast side of the complex. "An investigation is underway to determine the origin of this commercially available device, motive, and to identify suspects," said Secret Service spokesman Brian Leary.According to reports, the drone was not "weaponized," but thank God the Obamas were out of town, anyway.
As nearly two dozen Secret Service agents and members of the military were punished or fired following a 2012 prostitution scandal in Colombia, Obama administration officials repeatedly denied that anyone from the White House was involved. But new details drawn from government documents and interviews show that senior White House aides were given information at the time suggesting that a prostitute was an overnight guest in the hotel room of a presidential advance-team member — yet that information was never thoroughly investigated or publicly acknowledged.... The Secret Service shared its findings twice in the weeks after the scandal with top White House officials, including then-White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler. Each time, she and other presidential aides conducted an interview with the advance-team member and concluded that he had done nothing wrong. Meanwhile, the new details also show that a separate set of investigators in the inspector general’s office of the Department of Homeland Security — tasked by a Senate committee with digging more deeply into misconduct on the trip — found additional evidence from records and eyewitnesses who had accompanied the team member in Colombia.According to WaPo, the team member in question was Jonathan Dach, who now is a full time employee with the State Department's Office on Global Women’s Issues. Through a family attorney, Dach denies any "inappropriate conduct":
For next attorney general, reach across aisle Having a Defense secretary from the other party makes war bipartisan, and reassures members of the opposition that the powers of the sword aren't being abused. Likewise, naming an attorney general from the opposite party would tend to make the administration of justice bipartisan, and would provide considerable reassurance, as Holder's tenure in office emphatically did not, that the powers of law enforcement were not being abused in service of partisan ends. In an age of all-encompassing criminal laws, and pervasive government spying, that's a big deal.While I think that's a good idea, this suggestion in the Washington Post from Dan Emmett, a secret service expert and former Marine, is a great idea.
Who could have predicted such a thing? One blogger did....
The man accused of jumping the White House fence with a knife was free on bail at the time of the incident after his arrest on a separate weapons charge in Virginia, prosecutors said. Omar Gonzalez, who was accused of rushing the executive mansion on Sept. 19, made a court appearance today in Washington, where he was ordered held without bond. His next hearing is set for Oct. 1.Although the media hasn't quite picked up on exactly what this "weapons charge" is, friends and family of Gonzalez have already begun pushing back on the idea that Gonzalez's history with weapons adds a new angle to the already bizarre story. According to CBS News, friends of Gonzalez believe that if he had jumped the fence with the intent to harm, he would have brought something more deadly than a three-inch knife.
