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The White House held an off-the-record briefing with reporters on Friday afternoon to discuss recent revelations about the Benghazi investigation, sources familiar with the meeting tell POLITICO.

According to the Hawaii Star-Bulletin, the State of Hawaii, Department of Health no longer issues copies of paper birth certificates as was done in the past, said spokeswoman Janice Okubo. The department only issues "certifications" of live births, and that is the "official birth certificate" issued by the state of Hawaii, she said. And, it's only available in electronic form. Okubo explained that the Health Department went paperless in 2001. "At that time, all information for births from 1908 (on) was put into electronic files for consistent reporting," she said. Information about births is transferred electronically from hospitals to the...

White House Deflects Questions on NYC Plane Incident Susan Davis reports on the White House. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs offered little clarity on this morning’s incident in New York City in which Air Force One—escorted by a military jet—flew over Manhattan this morning for a photo op, prompting evacuations and other concerns. The president was not on board. (For more on the incident, read this Wall Street Journal story.) New York City police said the flight was authorized by the Federal Aviation Authority. The Air Force is directing media inquiries to the White House. But asked at the podium...

FAA says low-flying plane over Staten Island is 'pre-planned' flight to take photos by Staten Island Advance Monday April 27, 2009, 10:03 AM A plane, that appears to be a commercial jet tailed by fighter jets, is a "pre-planned" military flight taking photos of the Statue of Liberty, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Reports indicate it may be Air Force One. "It is pre-planned, pre-coordinated with everyone involved," said FAA spokesman Jim Peters. "It's a military flight over New York to take photos." Peters, who stressed it is not an emergency, said the flight is circling the Statue of...

The Obama administration denied Tuesday that former Vice President Dick Cheney had directly asked the CIA to declassify memos that he claims would vindicate Bush-era techniques for harsh interrogation of suspected terrorists. A senior U.S. intelligence offical e-mailed: "The Agency has received no such request from the former Vice President.”

While the Senate constructed the $787 billion stimulus last month, Dodd unexpectedly added an executive-compensation restriction to the bill. That amendment provides an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009,” which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are seeking to tax. The amendment is in the final version and is law.

AP's approach: 'Better to get it right even if we couldn't get it first' WASHINGTON - Reporters don't like being beaten on a major political story, especially by a supermarket tabloid. And being beaten up over not reporting one is even less appealing. But a sexual affair can have just two people who know the truth. Without witnesses, documents, photographs or some form of irrefutable evidence pointing to the truth, news organizations will not endanger their own integrity. That made it difficult to prove — and to print — the rumors that John Edwards had cheated on his seriously ill...

WASHINGTON – Senator Chuck Grassley today began asking tough questions of the Department of Justice and the FBI following the release of documents implicating Dr. Bruce Ivins as the only suspect in the Amerithrax investigation. “This has been a long investigation full of missteps and mistakes. There’s been too much secrecy up to this point and it deserves a full and thorough vetting,” Grassley said. “There are clearly a lot of unanswered questions and it’s time to start a dialogue so we can get answers.” Here is a copy of the text of Grassley’s letter. The Honorable Michael B. Mukasey...

Willful Blindness   By David ForsmarkFrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, June 03, 2008 Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the JihadBy Andrew C. McCarthyEncounter, $25.95, 352pp.As the presidential election approaches and Democrats vow to reverse many of the Bush tactics in the Global War on Terror – and John McCain flirts with the disastrous idea of giving terrorists access to the American judicial system – it's worth revisiting the days of the "law enforcement" approach to fighting terrorists.Andrew McCarthy was the federal prosecutor who, against all odds, secured a long prison term for Omar Abdel Rahman, the "Blind Sheikh" who plotted the...

COLUMBUS, 18 March 2008 — The FBI was interrogated for a change yesterday by members of the Muslim community at an event sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) at the Sunrise Academy in Columbus. Officials engaged in the discourse as part of the FBI’s so-called Community Relations Executive Seminar Training (CREST) program, which aims to improve relations with minority groups. Scheduled speakers at the event were special agents Kevin Bennett, Steve Flowers and Eric Thomas. The No. 1 concern in the audience was related to federal wiretapping, other forms of privacy invasion and the profiling of Muslims. snip...

The frustration of proving one's age to buy things like alcohol and tobacco does not end when you reach the appropriate legal age. Those of us who are fortunate enough to have a youthful appearance are forever burdened with having to carry a state-issued ID card to every place where we might want to buy alcohol or tobacco. Over the past few years, we've been gradually subjected to another, more intrusive ID-related hassle -- that of electronic drivers license scanning. It's one thing when a government representative scans your driver's license; it's another thing entirely when a restaurant does it,...

ARLINGTON, Virginia — The Transportation Security Administration is denying allegations that an airport screener seized a toddler's cup and mistreated his mother, taking the unusual step of posting security camera footage on its Web site. At issue is whether Monica Emmerson, a former Secret Service officer, was improperly detained June 11 after she spilled water out of her child's cup at Washington's Reagan National Airport. TSA has banned most fluids at airport security checkpoints because of concern about possible liquid explosives. A TSA report said Emmerson told an officer she was a Secret Service agent, flashed her credentials and said...

WASHINGTON - The judge in the CIA leak case ruled Thursday that if Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald feels that admitting certain classified documents at the upcoming trial of I Lewis "Scooter" Libby can jeopardize national security, Fitzgerald can then move to dismiss the perjury charges against Libby. Judge Reggie Walton cannot automatically allow classified materials to be admitted at trial. He first must go through a series of closed hearings under CIPA regulations. CIPA, the Classified Information Procedures Act, protects and restricts the discovery of classified information in a way that does not impair the defendant's right to a fair...

No terrorism in deadly Toronto doughnut shop explosion: police Last Updated Sun, 02 Apr 2006 21:16:42 EDT CBC News Police have ruled out terrorism as the cause of an explosion at a Tim Hortons doughnut shop in a trendy downtown area of Toronto on Sunday, killing one man. The victim was likely an arsonist or attempting suicide, Staff Sgt. Don Cole of Toronto police told reporters hours after the explosion. "He's not a strap-on al-Qaeda bomber guy," Cole said. "It sounds to me like a guy who either wanted to do a torch job or commit suicide." Police said...

NBC's senior diplomatic correspondent Andrea Mitchell is claiming that her comments have been deliberately distorted in reports covering a 2003 interview where she said Valerie Plame's identity had been "widely known" before her name appeared in a Robert Novak column. "The fact is that I did not know did not know [Plame's identity] before the Novak column," she told radio host Don Imus on Thursday. "I said it was widely known that an envoy had gone [to Niger]," she insisted. "I said we did not know who the envoy was until the Novak column." But the actual exchange in question...

Rep. Curt Weldon: 2 weeks before the attack on the USS Cole and then again 2 days before the attack on the USS Cole, saw through their analysis that a major event was going to occur in Yemen. They told the Navy not to bring the Cole into Yemen harbor and it went in and was attacked. That information was also compiled and the analysis was done by Able Danger. That story has not been told. These people will testify to that story as well.

A draft proposal floating behind closed doors would reconstitute and improve upon a former Army data-mining program called Able Danger. Able Providence, as the new program has been dubbed, would establish “robust open-source harvesting capabilities” to give military and law enforcement agencies the information to take the initiative in the war on terrorism—that is, to be able to plan and execute offensive measures—in addition to continued defensive actions. In addition, the program would be driven by a presumption that use of weapons of mass destruction within the United States is possible. As a result, Able Providence would need to detect,...

I did not take the story to the media first when I was told about Able Danger in June. I'd been working on datamining with the Army's LIWA (Land Information Warfare Assessment) facility for six years, since 1999...When I first found out about Able Danger three months ago, I went to the House floor after I investigated this. I went to two 9/11 commissioners, a Democrat and a Republican. And John Lehman told me I should pursue this publicly. He said, "Curt, if you don't, nobody else will." I went to the House floor and did a speech, and no...

Louis Freeh: No I disagree with that. And you know, while we're on the subject of the 9-11 Commission, I'm very interested and I know the country is in the Able Danger report. We have now very honorable military officers telling the United States, Tim, that in 2000 not only had Mohammad Atta been identified, by photo and name, but was earmarked as an Al Qaeda operative in the United States...

One of the biggest names of the conference never even uttered a word. Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer is the military intelligence operative who recently went public with a controversial claim that a year before September 11, his top-secret task force "Able Danger" was able to identify the man who later turned out to be the lead hijacker as being connected to al Qaeda. Shaffer is a veteran of top-secret operations against terrorists, including some in Afghanistan, and several of his DIA colleagues have come out publicly to confirm that they remember Mohamed Atta being identified in 2000 as part of...