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BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: It's either Kimberley Strassel or it's the other guy, Daniel Henninger, at the Wall Street Journal who has written a column saying that the only role Dingy Harry plays now is left tackle for Barack Obama. That's all he's there for, the left tackle, to handle Obama's blind side, to take care of the pass rush, to protect Obama. Dingy Harry was on KSNV-TV in Las Vegas Tuesday, and... Well, you have to hear it. They were talking about Obamacare. Just listen to this. The guy doing the interview is Jeff Gillan, the info anchor guy at...

Defending President Barack Obama's much-maligned health care law in Congress, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was confronted Wednesday with a government memo that raised security concerns about the website consumers are using to enroll. The document, obtained by The Associated Press, shows that administration officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services were concerned that a lack of testing posed a potentially "high" security risk for the HealthCare.gov website serving 36 states. Security issues are a new concern for the troubled HealthCare.gov website. If they cannot be resolved, they could prove to be more serious than the...

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Is this Obama's plan to fill the Doctor Shortages starting with the Veterans? SOS obtained this Letter to Department of Veterans Affairs about Nurses taking the place of doctors UNSUPERVISED by doctors in VA Medical Facilities. "If finalized, this handbook would designate all advanced practice nurses (APRN) within the VHA, including nurse anesthetists, as licensed independent practitioners (LIP) 1 2 who would be required to function without physician support, supervision or oversight." http://www.scribd.com/doc/163203536/A-Letter-to-Department-of-Veterans-Affairs-about-Nurses-taking-the-place-of-doctors-UNSUPERVISED-by-doctors-in-VA-Medical-Facilities

M E M O To: All Employees From: Management Subject: Revised layoff policy As a result of the reduction of money budgeted for departmental areas, we are forced to cut down on our number of personnel. Under the plan, planners will be asked to go on early retirement, thus permitting the retention of younger people who are willing to code 80 hours a week for the company. Therefore, a program to phase out all planners by the end of the current fiscal year, via layoff, will be placed into effect immediately. The program will be known as RAPE (Retire All...

A soon-to-be-released book by Mark Leibovich reveals in excruciating detail the White House’s efforts to defend longtime Obama friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett in the run-up to a New York Times profile that ran in September 2012. Leibovich, himself a reporter for the New York Times, got ahold of a White House memo titled “The Magic of Valerie” that included 33 talking points circulated throughout the administration. Here are the talking points excerpted in Leibovich’s forthcoming book, This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!-in America’s Gilded Capital: The magic of Valerie is her intellect and her...

In the full-circle department, recall the moment last September when Senator Max Baucus and Medicare went after the insurer Humana for having the nerve to criticize one part of ObamaCare. It turns out those same regulators have different standards for their own political advocacy. This week Medicare sent a flyer to seniors, ostensibly to inform them of what ObamaCare "means for you." Many elderly Americans are worried—and rightly so—about where they'll rank in national health care, given that the new entitlement is funded by nearly a half-trillion dollars in Medicare cuts. They must have been relieved to hear that "The...

**SNIP** I was dumbstruck. $400,000 is a huge sum of money... so huge that it comprised 40 percent of Blueprint NC’s entire budget. It is also significant because it’s coming from a foundation who thought they were giving money for a 501(c)3 to “strengthen democracy,” but instead awarded it to what appears to be an organization who engages in partisan politics. Winner was understandably upset after reading the initial column in the Observer, and told me, “We want citizens to be more engaged, but distributing this memo does not further those purposes.... It’s bad judgement.... We do not support attacking...

Last week's controversy over Obama's assassination program forced into light many ignored truths that were long obvious This past week has been a strangely clarifying political moment. It was caused by two related events: the leak of the Justice Department's "white paper" justifying Obama's claimed power to execute Americans without charges, followed by John Brennan's alarming confirmation hearing (as Charles Pierce wrote: "the man whom the administration has put up to head the CIA would not say whether or not the president of the United States has the power to order the extrajudicial killing of a United States citizen within...

Legal experts expressed grave reservations Tuesday about an Obama administration memo concluding that the United States can order the killing of American citizens believed to be affiliated with al-Qaida — with one saying the White House was acting as “judge, jury and executioner.” The experts said that the memo, first obtained by NBC News, threatened constitutional rights and dangerously expanded the definition of national self-defense and of what constitutes an imminent attack. “Anyone should be concerned when the president and his lawyers make up their own interpretation of the law or their own rules,” said Mary Ellen O’Connell, a law...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The government has authorized the killing of American citizens as part of its controversial drone campaign against al Qaeda even without intelligence that such Americans are actively plotting to attack a U.S. target, according to a Justice Department memo. The unclassified memo, first obtained by NBC News, argues that drone strikes are justified under American law if a targeted U.S. citizen had "recently" been involved in "activities" posing a possible threat and provided that there is no evidence suggesting the individual "renounced or abandoned" such activities. The document was disclosed as a bipartisan group of U.S. senators...

The White House has published an internal memo to calm tension between CIA director Leon Panetta and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, who is seeking increased control over covert operations, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday. The classified order asserts the Central Intelligence Agency's direct authority over secret missions abroad, but also reminds the agency to work closely with Blair, who heads the US intelligence establishment, a US intelligence official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. According to the LA Times, Blair was seeking more control over missions that include drone strikes and paramilitary operations in Pakistan. Blair...

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The Justice Department has withheld from Congress memos showing that senior officials inside the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives began preparing as early as February 2011 to treat the agents who unmasked the bungled Fast and Furious gun operation as whistleblowers. The memos, obtained by the Washington Guardian, were triggered by the agents' allegations, Justice officials confirmed. In them, ATF officials in Washington instructed field supervisors not to retaliate against the agents in Arizona who complained they had been ordered to let semiautomatic weapons flow to suspected straw buyers for Mexican drug cartels rather than interdicting them. Even...

The day before the Justice Department broadly, and falsely, denied that guns had “walked” as part of the botched “Fast and Furious” gun-smuggling operation, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told supervisors in a memo that he had expressed his concerns about the operation to Congressional investigators. In a July 3 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) questioned whether the memo should have raised red flags at the Justice Department. “The possibility that DOJ was aware of this memorandum on February 3, 2011, and still sent the erroneous letter to Congress...

Nearby today readers will notice excerpts from a memo written to Ronald Reagan by his economic advisers between his November 1980 election and inauguration. We share the memo because it shines a historical perspective on our own economic dilemmas as the Presidential race hits its Memorial Day turn. The memo was sent to us by George Shultz, who later became the Gipper's Secretary of State but had served previous stints at Treasury, Labor and the White House budget office. The signers include some of the last century's most consequential economic figures, notably the great Milton Friedman, tax-cut evangelist Jack Kemp...

From Accuracy in Media’s Logan Churchwell: An internal memo penned by the Associated Press’ Managing Editor Mike Oreskes was leaked and featured on sites such as The Huffington Post and Gawker this morning. As an effort to keep up with the rapidly changing news cycle, Oreskes is now offering a new direction for the wire service. The new plan of action is called “The New Distinctiveness.” But why the change? The AP defines the problem: “AP wins when news breaks, but after an hour or two we’re often replaced by a piece of content from someone else who has executed...

Secret Planned Parenthood Memo: Stop Maternity Coverage Since becoming pregnant, I have learned a hard reality. I have private insurance because I am self employed. I knew that my insurance plan did not offer maternity coverage. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/11/28/secret-planned-parenthood-memo-stop-maternity-coverage/

Reagan and Gingrich (from 1980) In his 1980 debate with President Carter, Ronald Reagan famously said: "...I think when you make that decision, it might be well if you would ask yourself, are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we're as strong as...

WASHINGTON – Michele Bachmann's plenty steamed about her treatment in tonight's CBS News/National Journal debate between GOP presidential candidates. Several times throughout the course of the 90-minute presentation, Rep. Bachmann, R-Minn., attempted to follow-up questions and answers by other candidates – just as the moderators of the debate suggested they would be allowed to do at their discretion.