Obama, all but declaring V-T (Victory Over Terror) Day, hits reset button on national security with drone and Guantanamo speech

Barack Obama has hit the reset button with the most far-reaching national security address of his presidency

Amid heckling, Obama defends drone strikes, vows to close Guantanamo

Saying it's time "to fight terrorists without keeping America on a perpetual wartime footing," President Barack Obama invited Congress in a speech on Thursday to help him scale back the country's 12-year conflict against al-Qaida and its affiliates. "America is at a crossroads. We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else [...]

Code Pink activist Medea Benjamin heckles Obama

President Barack Obama's planned counterterrorism speech was temporarily derailed several times on Thursday when activist Medea Benjamin shouted criticisms of the administration's use of drones and operation of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Benjamin, co-founder of peace activist group Code Pink, was seated in the audience at National Defense University in Washington, D.C., where Obama [...]

Anthony Weiner logo appears to feature Pittsburgh skyline

Anthony Weiner's nascent New York City mayoral campaign might have hit a slight snag. Azi Paybarah at Capital New York notes on Thursday that the skyline featured in a banner on Weiner's campaign site appears to picture the lovely city of Pittsburgh, not New York. Weiner announced his candidacy in a video posted to the [...]

Anthony Weiner courts NYC voters: ‘It’s a second-chance city, man!’

Mayoral hopeful Anthony Weiner made his first appearance on Thursday since declaring his candidacy, apologizing again for his bizarre, Internet-only infidelity scandal that forced him out of Congress nearly two years ago. "There may be people who will never vote for me, and I respect that," Weiner told the phalanx of reporters who surrounded him [...]

IRS' Lois Lerner Takes Fifth, Shuns Congress

Lois Lerner, the Internal Revenue Service’s director of Exempt Organizations who is at the center of the controversy after the agency targeted conservative organizations for gratuitous scrutiny, invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination today at a congressional hearing examining the scandal. Lerner quietly took...

IRS 'Blemish' Prompts Scorn From Senators

Douglas Shulman, the former commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, said today he was “dismayed and saddened” that his agency had improperly targeting conservative groups, but declined to offer a direct apology and dismissed suggestions that he mislead Congress. The testimony from Shulman, who was...

Christie Stars in NJ Tourism Ads, Dems Cry Foul

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and his family are starring in television commercials that are part of a publicly funded $25 million tourism campaign to encourage people to visit the Jersey Shore after Superstorm Sandy, but Democrats say they are simply taxpayer-funded campaign ads. The...

GOP Lieutenant Governor Candidate in Va. Compares Planned Parenthood to KKK

This weekend, Virginia Republicans found their candidate for lieutenant governor in E.W. Jackson, a Chesapeake, Va. pastor who has compared Planned Parenthood to the Ku Klux Klan and also suggested that black Americans are being enslaved by the Democratic Party. “It is time to end...

Republicans Informed of IRS Investigation Last Year

Much has been made of the fact that senior Treasury Department officials were told about the investigation into the treatment of tea party groups in June 2012 — months before last year’s the Presidential election. Republicans who requested the investigation were also told about it...

Obama lifts ban on Guantanamo transfers to Yemen

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is lifting his self-imposed ban on transferring Guantanamo Bay detainees to Yemen, where a leadership upheaval has improved the country's security but not eliminated a terrorist organization trying to recruit jihadists.

GOP Ariz. rep. who supports Medicaid is threatened

PHOENIX (AP) — A Republican member of the Arizona House who supports GOP Gov. Jan Brewer's push to expand Medicaid received an obscene and threatening voicemail at her office, a sign that the rancorous debate over embracing a signature component of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul in the state is far from over.

Tea party vs. old guard in GOP Senate rift

WASHINGTON (AP) — A long-simmering feud between establishment Republicans and tea partyers broke into full view Thursday, with Sen. John McCain accusing younger colleagues of overplaying their hands and tempting Democrats to change Senate rules that protect the minority party.

IRS replaces official in tea party controversy

WASHINGTON (AP) — A day after she refused to answer questions at a congressional hearing, Lois Lerner was replaced Thursday as director of the Internal Revenue Service division that oversaw agents who targeted tea party groups.

US criticized over response to Indonesia attacks

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. expressed concern Thursday over increased attacks on religious minorities in Indonesia, but human rights groups accused Washington of downplaying the problem as it looks to forge stronger relations with Jakarta.

How the GOP Will Keep Stirring the Scandal Stew Over Recess

Congressional Republicans head into next week’s Memorial Day recess armed with a strategy designed to keep the controversies that have consumed Washington in the news back home.

How GOP Will Keep Stirring the Scandal Stew Over Recess

Congressional Republicans head into next week’s Memorial Day recess armed with a strategy designed to keep the controversies that have consumed Washington in the news back home.

House Immigration 'Gang' Struggles, GOP Hints at Republican Bill

As the House group struggling to write a bipartisan immigration bill huddled in the Capitol on Thursday, Republican leadership indicated its wait-and-see approach was over.

Who Is Medea Benjamin, and Why Is She So Good at Heckling Public Officials?

Medea Benjamin heckles. A lot. Not only did she interrupt the president during his speech on national security issues Thursday, she has also abruptly stopped the speeches of Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, and the confirmation hearing of CIA administrator John Brennan. If there's an Occupy rally or a Republican convention, she'll probably be there, t

Republican Blueprint for 2014? Scandal, Most of The Time

Since last year's election, the Republican Party's political leaders offered a blueprint of how they can rebuild the party after disappointing across-the-board 2012 losses, proposing a retooled platform that would better appeal to the middle class and be more welcoming to minorities.

The Drone Speech and the Hyperexcited Return of Intellectual Obama

President Obama's speech on counterterrorism on Thursday won rave reviews among some who seemed to see it as a return of the liberal constitutional law professor who ran for president in 2008. MSNBC's Chris Matthews, who had soured on Obama earlier in the week, said Obama was at "the top of his form — speaking logically and authentically." On how to balance security with liberty, The Washington

Anthony Weiner Covers Up a New Photo Scandal: Mistaking NYC for Pittsburgh

If you thought Anthony Weiner was out ahead of the photo scandals in his comeback race for New York City mayor, well, that was fast: His new official campaign website switched up its main logo late Thursday afternoon to this...

Medea Benjamin's Two-Step Verified Trick to Sneaking Around Washington

Code Pink protester Medea Benjamin got herself inside the National Defense University in Washington on Thursday for President Obama's big speech about drones, even though she's been a famous heckler in Washington for a decade. Indeed, she's been seen and heard at many big political events over the last year: at CIA chief John Brennan's confirmation hearing, the NRA's Wayne LaPierre's press confere

The Time President Obama Talked to a Code Pink Heckler

There ended up being two speakers today at the National Defense University in DC. The first, as planned, was President Obama. The other, speaking for perhaps a few minutes in total, was Madea Benjamin, a heckler from Code Pink.

A Global War on Terror by Another Name Doesn't Tell Us How to Succeed

President Obama rejected the Bush-era term Global War on Terrorism in a major speech justifying and announcing changes to his counterterrorism policies at the National Defense University on Thursday. "Beyond Afghanistan, we must define our effort not as a boundless 'global war on terror' – but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists

Obama's New Drone Policy, in One Easy Flowchart

As a component of his policy speech on "new tools to prevent terror" Thursday afternoon, President Obama outlined the steps that would now be required for the government to launch a remote drone strike on a terror suspect. His version involved a lot of words. We made it simpler.

A Search for the Truth on Secret Courts for Surveillance — and Drones

At some point, the federal government violated the U.S. Constitution while conducting electronic surveillance. Discovering the details of that violation, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation is trying to do, involves unlocking two of the most impenetrable obstructions known to man: secrecy and bureaucracy. Meet the secret court that authorizes surveillance — the sort of tool Obama offers as one

Watch: Obama Unveils His Big Drone Plan

President Obama is about to deliver his major policy speech outlining the future of America's military drone program, and the future of the entire war on terror, though he doesn't want us to call it that anymore. The administration has been setting the stage for the last couple days, first by admitting that the U.S. has indeed killed American citizens with drone attacks overseas, but also by hav

Anthony Weiner Is Beating the Tabloids at Their Own Game on His New Selfies

Anthony Weiner sending out naughty pictures of himself to random women on the Internet — it's been a tantalizing storyline for almost exactly two years because of the mystery (are there more?) and the agony (can he survive?). Now that he's running for mayor and advancing his plan of pre-emptive damage control, has Weiner already takend the scandal out of the next scandal, when more selfies from

Watch the other hand: Immigration reform advances under cover of scandals

While some of President Obama's most outspoken critics are working overtime to expose details of the various scandals plaguing his administration these days, it seems there are games afoot on Capitol Hill -- specifically, the little-noticed advancement of the "Gang of Eight" immigration reform proposal.