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You can fire 10 Martin Bashirs and it won't start to repair damage done to NBC News Martin Bashir, the embattled MSNBC show host who on Nov. 15 urged a crude and graphic form of punishment for Sarah Palin, resigned from the channel Wednesday. MSNBC could afford to do nothing less than force Bashir out in the wake of his hateful speech. Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC, tried stonewalling the mounting criticism even after Bashir delivered an on-air apology, but the words and actions were too gross and hateful to allow Bashir to return. SNIP Under Griffin's leadership, MNSBC...

<p>For the first time in nearly 40 years, a majority of Americans believe the United States is less important around the world and that it should mind its own business, a stunning rejection of President Obama’s foreign policy just four years after he received the Nobel Prize.</p>

While the federal government was squeezed on one side by sequester and the other by a looming partial shutdown, the State Department was spending heavily on booze for its embassies abroad. The Washington Times reports that the department spent about $180,000 on alcohol in September and $400,000 in all of 2012—that’s three times the $118,000 spent in 2008. The booze tab reportedly has risen every year since 2008, but the end of fiscal 2012 saw a particular spike. …

The House Judiciary Committee is about to discuss what it calls “The President’s Constitutional Duty to Faithfully Execute the Laws,” focusing on the Obamacare delays, enforcement of immigration laws, and more. As Mediaite notes, the question of whether the president can take unilateral action to cease enforcing laws stretches back at least to last summer, when President Barack Obama said he would stop deporting young undocumented immigrants, an end-run around congressional refusal to pass the DREAM Act.

Why is Iran working on Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles? There is no possible peaceful purpose for ballistic missiles. Iran may claim that their nuclear program is peaceful, but they cannot possibly make that claim when it comes to ballistic missiles. The only reason to have ballistic missiles is to target enemies with high explosives and WMD. Iran’s Shehab-3 Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles have sufficient range to hit Israel, Saudi Arabia and US bases in Afghanistan, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait and Turkey. Why are the Iranians working with the North Koreans on multi-stage Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs)? Who might the Iranians be...

The House’s chief investigator says the FBI is stonewalling his inquiry into whether the agency and the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative group True the Vote for special scrutiny, and Rep. Darrell E. Issa is now threatening subpoenas to pry loose the information from FBI Director James B. Comey Jr. Mr. Issa, California Republican, and Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, are leading the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s IRS inquiry. They also said the FBI is refusing to turn over any documents related to its own investigation into the IRS, which began in the days after an auditor’s report...

Bob Shlora of Alpharetta, Ga., was supposed to be a belated Obamacare success story. After weeks of trying, the 61-year-old told ABC News he fully enrolled in a new health insurance plan through the federal marketplace over the weekend, and received a Humana policy ID number to prove it. But two days later, his insurer has no record of the transaction, Shlora said, even though his account on the government website indicates that he has a plan. “I feel like this: My application was taken … by a bureaucrat, it was put on a conveyor belt and it’s still going...

Martin Bashir, the MSNBC host who has come under fire for the controversial remarks he made about Sarah Palin, is "on vacation" and will not host his namesake afternoon program on Monday, POLITICO has learned. Sources at the network said Bashir had been temporarily suspended from the network following graphic remarks he made last month about the former governor from Alaska. In that segment, Bashir suggested that Palin should be forced to endure slavery like conditions, including the consumption of feces. MSNBC spokesperson Lauren Skowronski told a different story: "He’s still out on vacation," she wrote in an email. Asked...

U.S. military authorities dispatched the first of six top-tech submarine-hunting jets to its Okinawa post near the disputed East China Sea, a move sure to ratchet up tensions among China and the United States. The Navy plans to send in a total of six P-8 Poseidon patrol craft, aimed at bolstering the United States’ ability to root out submarines in the area, Reuters reported. The deployment was planned months ago, but nonetheless comes as China declared an air defense zone above islands that it’s fighting Japan to control.

Xi strikes out, Biden comes to the plate, score tied A lot has been written in the past week about China's new Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea, including by me both on NRO and Politico. Given the Obama administration's recent flailing on Iran and Syria (not to mention Obamacare), it was easy to assume that the distracted White House would try to sweep China's new policy under the rug.I'll be the first to admit I was too pessimistic, though part of me also assumed that the Chinese challenge was such low-hanging fruit that the administration...

Report: Obama Arranging Tehran Visit for Next Year Daniel Halper December 2, 2013 10:46 AM The Kuwaiti news outlet Al-Jarida reports that President Obama is seeking to arrange a trip to Tehran, Iran next year. The headline of the article reads, "Obama would like to visit Tehran, official invitation after details resolved." "Al-Jarida has learned from a U.S. diplomat that President Barack Obama is seeking to visit Tehran in the middle of next year," the report reads, based on a translation using Google Translate. "The source said that the desire to visit is shared, and that Tehran and Washington are...

A pregnant woman has had her baby forcibly removed by caesarean section by social workers. Essex social services obtained a High Court order against the woman that allowed her to be forcibly sedated and her child to be taken from her womb. **SNIP** The baby girl, now 15 months old, is still in the care of social services, who are refusing to give her back to the mother, even though she claims to have made a full recovery.

KIEV, Ukraine –  More than 100,000 demonstrators chased away police to rally in the center of Ukraine's capital on Sunday, defying a government ban on protests on Independence Square, in the biggest show of anger over the president's refusal to sign an agreement with the European Union. Thousands of demonstrators tried to storm the nearby presidential administration building, but were driven back by riot police using tear gas and flash grenades, which produce a loud bang but are not intended to cause injury. The standoff continued, with more demonstrators arriving. The protest was led by prominent opposition politicians, who...

China will tomorrow become the first country in almost 40 years to soft-land a probe on the moon, in a huge step forward for its ambitious space programme. The nation will become the third in history to launch a lunar probe when the device, named 'Jade Rabbit' after a Chinese folklore character, launches at 5.30pm on Sunday evening, which is 1.30am local time. The mission forms part of a plan in which China hopes to build a permanent lunar base in order to launch future missions to Mars within the next 15 years.

The Obama administration claimed victory Sunday for making HealthCare.gov workable for the vast majority of users, a standard that will be tested as millions of people flood the site in the next three weeks. Sunday marked the passage of the administration's self-imposed deadline for fixing the broken ObamaCare enrollment website, which serves consumers in 36 states. The agency that oversees HealthCare.gov said "we believe we have met the goal" of making the system navigable for most people, but cautioned that more fixes lie ahead. "Dramatic progress has been made," the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) stated in a...

The terrorism threat against the United States is increasing and Americans aren't as safe as they were a year or two ago, the leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees said. Sen. Dianne Feinstein said there are more terrorist groups than ever, with more sophisticated and hard-to-detect bombs. The California Democrat said "there is huge malevolence out there." Rep. Mike Rogers said there's enormous pressure on U.S. intelligence services "to get it right, to prevent an attack." The Michigan Republican said that job is getting more difficult because al-Qaida is changing, with more affiliates around the world. He said...

The secret back channel of negotiations between Iran and the United States, which led to this month’s interim deal in Geneva on Iran’s rogue nuclear program, has also seen a series of prisoner releases by both sides, which have played a central role in bridging the distance between the two nations, the Times of Israel has been told. In the most dramatic of those releases, the US in April released a top Iranian scientist, Mojtaba Atarodi, who had been arrested in 2011 for attempting to acquire equipment that could be used for Iran’s military-nuclear programs.

Iran will decide the level of uranium enrichment in its nuclear programme based on its energy and other civilian needs, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in remarks reported Saturday. His remarks appeared to conflict with the landmark nuclear deal struck with world powers in Geneva last weekend, which states that the enrichment level must be mutually defined and agreed upon by both sides in further negotiations. "Iran will decide the level of enrichment according to its needs for different purposes," Zarif said late Friday night, according to the official IRNA news agency. "Only details of the enrichment activities are...

The news isn't all bad: Users say the site looks better, pages load faster, and more people are getting through to sign up for health plans. But technical problems still affect HealthCare.gov's ability to verify users' identities and transmit accurate enrollment data to insurers, officials say. The data center that supports the site faces continuing challenges, and tools for processing payments to insurers haven't been built. Technical staff in Washington have been racing up to the end-of-November deadline. In their last public pronouncement on the effort, three days before the deadline, officials said they had much to do to get...

Remember that third recall effort out in Colorado, targeting two-term Democrat Evie Hudak? It is now moot. State Sen. Evie Hudak has decided to resign rather than risk facing a recall election that, should she lose, would flip control of the senate to Republicans, FOX31 Denver was first to report Wednesday. Later Wednesday morning, Hudak made her resignation letter public. “In the interest of preserving the progress made over the last year, I am resigning as State Senator for District 19, effective immediately,” Hudak wrote. By resigning before the signatures are turned in, she assures that a Democratic vacancy committee...

HealthCare.gov, the problem-plagued federal online site for signing up for insurance under Obamacare, will go down for extended maintenance on Friday night and overnight ahead of Saturday's deadline to have it working for most people, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said. The overnight maintenance overnight is set to last from 9 p.m. ET Friday until 8 a.m. ET Saturday. It's not the first time the website has gone done; the administration has frequently done regular weekend maintenance, usually on Sunday mornings from 1 a.m ET to 5 a.m. ET. During the maintenance checks, the website's application and enrollment...

Riffing on Hanukkah holiday, prime minister says Israel will be a ‘light unto the nations’ in dealing with Tehran should diplomacy fail Melding the Hanukkah holiday and foreign affairs, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu solemnly vowed to serve as a “light unto the nations” and act against Iran’s nuclear program should diplomacy fail Thursday night. Speaking at the Western Wall for a Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony, Netanyahu compared Iran’s nuclear program to a darkness that would be forced out by Israel, referencing a popular children’s song for the holiday. “We came to drive out the darkness, and the largest darkness that threatens...

Chinese state media say China has sent two fighter planes to investigate flights by a dozen U.S. and Japanese planes in its newly established maritime air defence zone over the East China Sea. It is thought the incident is separate to China's announcement that it would carry out regular patrols in its air zone.

Besides movie theaters and Wal-Mart, one place that will stay open this Thanksgiving is the new HealthCare.gov "exchange operations center." Staffers on the "tech surge" to fix the error-riddled site have just days to meet the Obama administration's self-imposed deadline for a functioning site. The pledge came from the president, the vice president, the Health and Human Services secretary, and the numerous spokespeople that represent them, like White House spokesman Jay Carney. "By November 30th, HealthCare.gov will be working smoothly for the vast majority of users," Carney has said, time and time again. But the definition of working smoothly varies,...

TOKYO — China sent its fighter jets into its newly declared air defense zone Thursday on what state media called the country’s first air patrol since it declared control of the airspace. The announcement came hours after Japan and South Korea sent their own military planes into the airspace over the East China Sea, testing China’s resolve to enforce its declaration. The announcement of the flights came just days after unarmed American B-52 bombers flew through the same zone in defiance of China. Beijing later said that it had monitored the American bombers but had chosen not to take action...

It's been a tough year for the liberal cable news outlets. Data released Tuesday show CNN shedding 48 percent of total viewers since last November and MSNBC dropping 45 percent. The numbers were even worse in the all important demographic of people aged 25 to 54 as CNN's ratings dropped 59 percent and MSNBC's 52 percent. In an off-election year, and with last November's numbers skewed higher as a result of the presidential election, it should be expected for ratings to decline. However, Fox News didn't see close to these losses. In total day, FNC is only down 18...

US now indicates Iran interim deal wasn’t quite finalized ‘Technical details’ have yet to be worked out, State Department says, meaning six-month countdown to permanent deal hasn’t started and Iran isn’t bound by any new terms Iran is currently enjoying a “window” of time before the six-month deal signed in Geneva early Sunday goes into effect, during which it is not bound to take any credible steps toward disabling its ability to produce a nuclear weapon, the State Department acknowledged Tuesday. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that the six-month interim period, during which Iran would take steps to rein...

For over a decade, Iran has had a robust, active ballistic missile development program. There are new developments on this front. Before we link those, here are the basics of the Iranian ballistic missile program… Iran has several types of ballistic missiles, ranging from Short Range Ballistic Missiles (SRBM) to Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBM). Some are imported systems, some are domestic copies of foreign systems and some are indigenous systems. Iran is also known to be working on ICBMs–Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. According to the Obama Defense Department’s “Annual Report on the Military Power of Iran,” published in April of...

This week in Washington, Senator Marco Rubio accused a fellow American of treason. Edward Snowden drew the Republican's ire by informing hundreds of millions of innocent people that the NSA is spying on them... Anyone familiar with the Snowden story will understand why Rubio's comments are misleading. Americans are concerned about their civil liberties because of the accurate information the former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor leaked. He isn't responsible for any conspiracy theories, except in the sense that a conspiracy is "an agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act," and he exposed NSA and GCHQ cooperation on...

Marking the latest HealthCare.gov setback, the Obama administration today will announce a yearlong delay of online enrollment for small businesses looking to purchase health coverage through federal-run exchanges, according to an HHS notice obtained by POLITICO. Small businesses have been able to apply through paper applications since Oct. 1, and HHS will announce alternative sign-up methods, like enrolling through an agent or broker or directly through an insurer. “We’ve concluded that we can best serve small employers by continuing this offline process while we concentrate on both creating a smoothly functioning online experience in the SHOP Marketplace, and adding key...

CNN) -- A controversial bill that would extend the right to request euthanasia to children suffering terminal illnesses and adults with dementia cleared a vote in a Belgian Senate committee Wednesday. The panel voted 13-4 to allow minors to seek euthanasia under certain conditions, the communications director for the Senate, Patrick Peremans, told CNN. The vote is one stage in a legislative process -- the bill must clear other hurdles before it becomes law. Belgium passed legislation in 2002 allowing voluntary euthanasia for adults.

Iran will pursue construction at the Arak heavy-water reactor, Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif was quoted as saying on Wednesday, despite a deal with world powers to shelve a project they fear could yield plutonium for atomic bombs. France, one of the six powers that negotiated Sunday's interim pact with Iran to curb its disputed nuclear program, said in response to Zarif's statement that Tehran had to keep to what was agreed in the Geneva talks. The uncompleted research reactor emerged as one of several big stumbling blocks in the marathon negotiations, in which Iran agreed to restrain its atomic...

The poll, conducted by Harper Polling over the weekend, shows Christie with 17 percent support, just slightly ahead of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s 16 percent....

... "Said retired Army Col. Ken Allard, now a military analyst: “Call me crazy, but what on earth is the point of remaining there under these [rules of engagement], much less subjecting American soldiers to another set of restrictions that make sense only in proportion to your distance from the combat zone?”

The Obama administration on Tuesday moved to issue new rules that would curtail political activity by tax-exempt nonprofit groups, with potentially significant ramifications for one of the fastest-growing sources of campaign spending. The proposed rules, announced by the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service, would expand and clarify how the I.R.S. defines political activity and then establish clearer limits for how much activity nonprofits can engage in. Such a change — long urged by government watchdog groups — would be the first wholesale shift in a generation in the regulations governing political activity. The move to curtail nonprofits follows...

For two decades, the U.S. military has been unable to submit to an audit, flouting federal law and concealing waste and fraud totaling billions of dollarsLinda Woodford spent the last 15 years of her career inserting phony numbers in the U.S. Department of Defense’s accounts. Every month until she retired in 2011, she says, the day came when the Navy would start dumping numbers on the Cleveland, Ohio, office of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, the Pentagon’s main accounting agency. Using the data they received, Woodford and her fellow DFAS accountants there set about preparing monthly reports to square...

During remarks on immigration, President Obama was confronted onstage by a protester calling on him to use executive power to bypass Congress on the issue. The protester, standing behind the president during a speech in San Francisco, was joined by others who began to chant “Stop deportation!” “If, in fact, I could solve all these problems without passing them through Congress, I would do so,” President Obama responded. “But we’re also a nation of laws.” During his remarks, the president praised supporters of the Senate bill, including activists fasting on the National Mall, and encouraged House Speaker John Boehner, whom...

November 25, 2013, 03:30 pm HealthCare.gov won't be perfect on Dec. 1, administration says By Elise Viebeck Administration officials said Monday that some visitors to ObamaCare's federal enrollment site would experience outages, slow response times or messages to try again later during the month of December. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) delivered the message in the latest attempt to downplay expectations surrounding Nov. 30, the administration's self-imposed deadline for fixing HealthCare.gov. CMS spokeswoman Julie Bataille said errors that persist past this weekend would be "intermittent" and, in line with a promise made by the White House, would...

"The prime minister made it clear to the most powerful man on earth that if he intends to stay the most powerful man on earth, it´s important to make a change in American policy because the practical result of his current policy is liable to lead him to the same failure that the Americans absorbed in North Korea and Pakistan, and Iran could be next in line." That was the message conveyed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to President Barack Obama in a private telephone call Sunday to discuss the interim deal on Iran´s nuclear program, according to a...

PHOENIX — Attorneys for four Arizona groups involved with voter registration are trying to get a federal judge to kill a bid by Secretary of State Ken Bennett to require proof of citizenship from all who register to vote. Nina Perales of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund said the U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that Arizona cannot enforce its documentation requirement on those who use a registration form from the federal Election Assistance Commission. Perales said  Bennett’s lawsuit “is essentially trying to make an end run around the U.S. Supreme Court decision.” But Bennett...

The state Board of Elections on Monday certified Democrat Mark Herring as the winner of the Nov. 5 election for Virginia attorney general. Herring, a state senator from Loudoun County, beat state Sen. Mark Obenshain (R), by 165 votes out of more than 2 million votes cast.

There is speculation in the blogosphere and on the airwaves this morning that the timing of the Obama/Kerry/Ayatollahs Agreement was designed to distract Americans from the Obamacare debacle. This speculation is wrong for two reasons.

TOKYO — Matching China’s stern rhetoric with warnings of his own, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan vowed on Monday to defend his nation’s airspace after China declared an air defense zone over a disputed group of islands in the East China Sea. Speaking in Parliament, Mr. Abe called China’s move an unacceptable effort to change the status quo with threats of force. He described it as a dangerous ratcheting up of tensions in the standoff over the uninhabited islands, which are administered by Japan but also claimed by China. “We are determined to defend our country’s air and sea...

(Reuters) - Caught flat-footed by the challenges of building the financial-management and accounting parts of the U.S. government's new online marketplace for health insurance, officials rushed to hire a familiar contractor without seeking competing bids, according to government procurement documents reviewed by Reuters. The documents dated in August - less than two months before the opening of online marketplaces established by President Barack Obama's landmark healthcare law - showed the agency in charge had only "recently learned" that building the financial management functions was "beyond (its) currently available resources."

House Speaker John Boehner’s health insurance premiums will nearly double — and his deductibles will almost triple — as a result of the Affordable Care Act, according to figures provided by his office at POLITICO’s request. Don’t expect to hear the Ohio Republican complain about his personal price spike, but he’s one of many older lawmakers and aides who are just finding out how much more they will have to pay as they move from the old Federal Employees Health Benefits system to coverage in the District of Columbia’s new health insurance exchange, as required by a provision in the...

Oil prices are likely to drop, analysts said, as the nuclear accord between Iran and six world powers potentially paves the way for more crude oil to reach the global market.

MOSCOW, November 24 (RIA Novosti) – Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday praised a last-minute agreement between Iran and the six international negotiators on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. “The agreement is a balanced list of measures and it will certainly have a positive influence on the development of the international situation, especially in the Middle Eastern region,” Putin said in a statement as quoted by the Kremlin. Iran and the P5+1 group (permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) clinched the deal Sunday morning following four days of talks, apparently resolving the decade-long dispute over the issue....

Yellen currently serves as vice chairman of the Fed and as a reliable dove would represent continuity with Bernanke. She has consistently supported Bernanke’s easy-money policies and even seems open to more aggressive moves to fight stubbornly-high unemployment. "I consider it imperative that we do what we can to promote a very strong recovery," Yellen said during her confirmation hearing. Yet Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced plans on Thursday to enact the so-called "nuclear option," which would change Senate rules to allow him to approve certain motions with a simple majority rather than 60 votes. Yellen, who was among...

Negotiations for an “interim” arrangement over Iran’s nuclear weapons program finally succeeded this past weekend, as Security Council foreign ministers (plus Germany) flew to Geneva to meet their Iranian counterpart. After raising expectations of a deal by first convening on November 8-10, it would have been beyond humiliating to gather again without result. So agreement was struck despite solemn incantations earlier that “no deal is better than a bad deal.” This interim agreement is badly skewed from America’s perspective. Iran retains its full capacity to enrich uranium, thus abandoning a decade of Western insistence and Security Council resolutions that Iran...