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The 44th President of the United States is, of course, Barack Hussein Obama II. Barack Hussein Obama II has also been known by names such as Barry Soetoro, Barry Obama, and Barack Hussein Obama (Soebarkah). To be sure, only supposed madmen note that the name "Soebarkah" originated in very tight spatiotemporal proximity to the operations of a cult called "Subud" that was founded by a Muslim named Mohammad Subuh -- a cult wherein personal name changes were the order of the day.

**SNIP** Eight months later, the probe has shown few public signs of progress, and many of the tea party victims say they still haven’t heard from the FBI or Justice Department lawyers. House Republicans said they were concerned about the direction of the probe, and Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican and a subcommittee chairman on the House oversight committee, asked Ms. Bosserman to testify at a hearing next week. The GOP has identified her as the lead lawyer on the investigation, and they have questioned her role, given her history as a significant political donor to President Obama’s 2008 and...

Last week the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence issued its report on the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya. The report concluded that the attack, which resulted in the murder of four Americans, was "preventable." Some have been suggesting that the blame for this tragedy lies at least partly with Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed in the attack. This is untrue: The blame lies entirely with Washington. The report states that retired Gen. Carter Ham, then-commander of the U.S. Africa Command (Africom) headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, twice offered to "sustain" the special forces security team in Tripoli...

Senate Intelligence Committee members did not include important testimony from Benghazi whistleblower Gregory Hicks about security at the U.S. mission in their final report, which had the effect of blaming the fallen ambassador and protecting a top State Department official from responsibility for the attack. "I was interviewed by the Select Committee and its staff, who were professional and thorough. I explained this sequence of events," Hicks (who worked with the late U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, in the lead-up to the attack) explained in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Thursday. "For some reason, my explanation did not...

The Justice and State departments are now citing a year-old FBI investigation and a future criminal prosecution to block access to survivors of last year’s Benghazi terror attack. In an Oct. 28 letter to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.,the State Department’s Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs, Julia Frifield, refers to "significant risks" and "serious concerns about having the survivors of the attack submit to additional interviews." Graham has been asking since last year for the FBI’s transcripts of interviews with State Department and CIA survivors who were evacuated to Germany after the Sep.11 attack on the U.S. consulate. He and other...

Discussing the Obamacare disaster in the Rose Garden on Monday, President Obama led with a phrase to which we have become accustomed: “Nobody,” the president emoted, “is madder than me” about this mess. Along with “let me be clear” and “make no mistake,” this is a favorite construction. Obama, you see, is more concerned for and correct about everything than everybody else at all times. “Nobody shares the frustrations of the American people more than I do,” he told WABC earlier this month; “nobody is more frustrated” than he about the IRS scandal; “no person,” the president affirmed during the...

Remember when the media rushed to talk about transparency in the Barack Obama “Hope and Change” era? Good times, good times. Leonard Downie, who once worked as the executive editor of the Washington Post and wrote a novel about Washington corruption and the Iraq War, finds a bigger and non-fictional problem in the successor to George W. Bush. Downie gives the Post a preview of his report from the Committee to Protect Journalists which outlines the Obama war on reporters and their sources: “A memo went out from the chief of staff a year ago to White House employees and...

The National Security Agency is winning its long-running secret war on encryption, using supercomputers, technical trickery, court orders and behind-the-scenes persuasion to undermine the major tools protecting the privacy of everyday communications in the Internet age, according to newly disclosed documents. The agency has circumvented or cracked much of the encryption, or digital scrambling, that guards global commerce and banking systems, protects sensitive data like trade secrets and medical records, and automatically secures the e-mails, Web searches, Internet chats and phone calls of Americans and others around the world, the documents show. Many users assume — or have been assured...

President Barack Obama pledged he’d appoint “outside experts” to review the country’s surveillance practices, but he’s since tapped largely insiders for the key posts. The group, formed to examine the policies and procedures at the National Security Agency as it tracks terrorism suspects’ digital communications, is composed mostly of Washington types, many with connections to the very intelligence establishment they’re now tasked with scrutinizing in the wake of Edward Snowden’s leaks. There’s Michael Morell, a CIA veteran who once led the agency on an interim basis; Richard Clarke, a top counter-terrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations; and Cass...

When former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked the existence of a massive spying program siphoning up Americans' personal phone records earlier this year, President Obama declared: "I welcome this debate and I think it's healthy for our democracy."Shortly thereafter, his administration revoked Snowden's passport and hit him with Espionage Act charges (filed under seal, naturally).That's the thing about the self-styled "most transparent administration in history": Often you can't find out what they're up to until somebody breaks the law to let you know.One suspects Obama "welcomes this debate" about as enthusiastically as Anthony Weiner greets the debate over...

The establishment press's general refusal to cover clearly newsworthy developments in the Obama administration scandal involving the targeting of conservative, tea party, prolife and other groups by the Internal Revenue Service has been so negligent and blatant that several leading conservatives, including the MRC's Brent Bozell and talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh, called it out in an open letter earlier this week. Consistent with the rest of their colleagues, the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, appears to have had no substantive story on the scandal since July 18 -- and that one was about primarily Democrats beating the false meme...

"IRS Sent $46 Million in Tax Refunds to 23,994 ‘Unauthorized’ Aliens — All at the SAME Address in Atlanta" The IRS sent more than $46 million in tax refunds to 23,994 “unauthorized” alien workers who all listed the same address in Atlanta, Ga., in 2011, according to an audit report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). However, the Atlanta address that received millions of dollars in refunds was not the only address apparently housing thousands of “unauthorized” aliens. In fact, it wasn’t even the only address in Atlanta that was claiming such a situation.

June 21, 2013 IRS Sent $46,378,040 in Refunds to 23,994 ‘Unauthorized’ Aliens at 1 Atlanta Address Terence P. Jeffrey (CNSNews.com) - The Internal Revenue Service sent 23,994 tax refunds worth a combined $46,378,040 to “unauthorized” alien workers who all used the same address in Atlanta, Ga., in 2011, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).That was not the only Atlanta address theoretically occupied by thousands of “unauthorized” alien workers receiving millions in federal tax refunds in 2011. In fact, according to a TIGTA audit report published last year, four of the top ten addresses to which the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — An Internal Revenue Service supervisor in Washington says she was personally involved in scrutinizing some of the earliest applications from tea party groups seeking tax-exempt status, including some requests that languished for more than a year without action. Holly Paz, who until recently was a top deputy in the division that handles applications for tax-exempt status, told congressional investigators she reviewed 20 to 30 applications. Her assertion contradicts initial claims by the agency that a small group of agents working in an office in Cincinnati were solely responsible for mishandling the applications. Paz, however, provided no evidence...

A federal judge has ruled that Google must comply with the FBI's warrantless requests for confidential user data, despite the search company's arguments that the secret demands are illegal.

Eric Holder to media: I get it By: Dylan Byers May 30, 2013 08:29 PM EDT Attorney General Eric Holder expressed concern on Thursday about how the Department of Justice has handled recent media investigations at an off-the-record meeting with leading representatives of the press, according to those who were present. At the session, Holder and Deputy Attorney General James Cole expressed a willingness to revise the guidelines for such investigations, journalists present at the get-together told POLITICO. But Holder stopped short of offering any concrete changes to the guidelines. Instead, the Attorney General sought to assure the journalists that...

Bret Baier ‏@BretBaier 2m Decision: Fox News’ Executive Vice President Michael Clemente has said that Fox News will NOT attend the DOJ meeting if it is OFF the record

The Associated Press says it will not attend this week's off-the-record meeting with Attorney General Eric Holder unless the Justice Department decides to change its mind and conduct the meeting on the record. "We believe the meeting should be on the record and we have said that to the Attorney General’s office. If it is on the record, AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll will attend. If it is not on the record, AP will not attend and instead will offer our views on how the regulations should be updated in an open letter," AP spokesperson Erin Madigan said in a...

The “tonight’s news” referred to by The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza comes via the New York Times: Wow, tonight's news dramatically escalates the war between DOJ and Fox. Somebody is not telling the whole truth.— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) May 27, 2013 News Corporation said on Sunday that it had no record of being notified by the Justice Department nearly three years ago of a subpoena for the telephone records of a reporter at its Fox News cable channel [James Rosen]. The company’s chief legal counsel at the time also said that he had never seen material from the government related...

The dam protecting the IRS scandal began to crack today when Lois Lerner, the IRS official who announced, and apologized for, the improper singling out of conservative-leaning organizations by IRS employees under her command, announced through her criminal defense lawyer that she will not testify as scheduled tomorrow before the House Oversight Committee. Rather, she will assert her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. This marks a milestone in the IRS investigation. It can now be taken as more or less established that crimes were committed by Obama administration employees. LernerÂ’s lawyer tried to minimize the significance of her invoking the...