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The Obama administration plans to overhaul the nation’s security clearance system to prevent future intelligence leaks like the one by former defense contractor Edward Snowden. The changes, part of a package of reforms President Obama is expected to announce Friday during a speech at the Justice Department, will include more stringent — and more frequent  — vetting of security clearances, according to sources familiar with the administration’s plans.  The president is embracing some of the proposals offered by an advisory panel he appointed. The panel recommended security clearances become more highly differentiated and that a new clearance level be created...

Pelosi to Reporter: It’s Not Obamacare, It’s The Affordable Care Act BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff January 9, 2014 4:45 pm House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) retorted to a reporter’s question about slipping support for Obamacare at her Thursday press conference that it was called the “Affordable Care Act.”Pelosi has referred to the law previously as Obamacare, although she also told Meet the Press host David Gregory she’d “always” called it the Affordable Care Act during a contentious November interview.Full exchange:Q: The three “Obamacare” bills on the floor tomorrow in the House, some Democrats have indicated they might...

<p>HONOLULU (AP) - On these sun-bathed shores, Barack Obama was born and spent his formative years, soaking in an island sensibility that his wife and friends say is indispensable to understanding who he is as president. Yet in the search for a home for his future presidential library, Hawaii has become the underdog, stuck in Chicago's perpetual shadow.</p>

The US Department of Justice on Thursday stepped into the cultural fray about the so-called “knockout game” when it brought federal hate crime charges against a white Texas man for assaulting an unsuspecting black man. The decision shines a brighter spotlight on the knockout game, in which an assailant tries to knock out a bystander with a single punch. A spate of incidents have gathered national attention in recent months, though it is unclear whether the game has become more popular or whether the Internet has simply allowed for isolated incidents to be broadcast more widely. The majority of the...

Judge dings admin for ‘cavalier attitude’ toward transparencyA federal judge Tuesday rejected the Obama administration’s sweeping claims of executive privilege and ordered the disclosure of a foreign aid directive signed by President Barack Obama in 2010 but never publicly released. U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle ruled the presidential order is not within the bounds of executive privilege and called the government’s arguments in favor of secrecy “troubling.” “The government appears to adopt the cavalier attitude that the President should be permitted to convey orders throughout the Executive Branch without public oversight … to engage in what is in effect...

The Justice Department asserted that the Presidential Policy Directive on Global Development was covered by executive privilege, even though it is unclassified and reflected standing guidance to agencies rather than advice given to the president. Acting on a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the Center for Effective Government, U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle concluded that the presidential order is not properly within the bounds of the so-called "presidential communications privilege." The judge went further, calling "troubling" the sweeping nature of the government's argument's in the case. Huvelle noted that she ordered the document delivered to her under...

On Wednesday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa sent a letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, angrily telling her that HHS’ attempts to block contractors from giving information to Congress on Obamacare was a violation of law. On December 6, HHS told Creative Computing Solutions, Inc. not to give information to the Oversight Committee, stating, “If you receive a request for this information from Congress, CMS will respond directly to the requestor[.]”

On Thursday night, MSNBC host Chris Matthews will sit down with President Barack Obama for an interview which will, in part, focus on the problematic roll-out of the Affordable Care Act. Matthews said that he intends to grill the president on this failure and contended that this incident was akin to “a brilliant writer” who, despite a “great theme,” turns in an essay full of technical flaws. “I’ll be talking about executive accountability and the strange way of this roll out, as it has occurred,” Matthews told MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell. “I think I would compare it, Andrea, to a

Sharyl Attkisson touted 'Fast and Furious' whistleblower John Dodson as "a rare example, especially amid the Obama administration's war on leaks" during a segment on Monday's CBS This Morning. Attkisson, whose reporting on the arms trafficking scandal won CBS a Edward R. Murrow Award, spotlighted the ATF senior agent's new book on "the inside story of why he went public to expose the government's false denials about its gunwalking secrets." The correspondent also pointed out how "there's still a court battle over the 'Fast and Furious' documents that President Obama is withholding from Congress under executive privilege". She also featured...

Ellen Richardson went to Pearson airport on Monday full of joy about flying to New York City and from there going on a 10-day Caribbean cruise for which she’d paid about $6,000. But a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent with the Department of Homeland Security killed that dream when he denied her entry. “I was turned away, I was told, because I had a hospitalization in the summer of 2012 for clinical depression,’’ said Richardson, who is a paraplegic and set up her cruise in collaboration with a March of Dimes group of about 12 others. The Weston woman...

The health care revolution will not be televised despite what President Obama promised you two years ago. Obama has broken his campaign promises to make the health care debate a transparent process after saying he would do so on at least eight occasions during his 2008 White House run.

A day after a Connecticut state's attorney released a final report on the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, a judge ruled the 911 tapes from the shootings be released .... Superior Court Judge Eliot Prescott ordered the release of recordings of the phone calls that Newtown, Conn., police received from the school on Dec. 14, 2012 .... The 911 tapes are to be released on or before Dec. 4 at 2 p.m., Prescott said.... The Associated Press had requested the 911 tapes be released under the Freedom of Information Act so the public can judge the police response to the...

A measure to prohibit overcharging for Freedom of Information Act request materials is poised to begin moving in the Michigan Legislature. House Bill 4001 is scheduled to be taken up by the House Government Oversight Committee today. It is expected that a vote will be taken on the bill and it will be approved, possibly on a bipartisan vote. If approved, the bill would be sent to the House floor for consideration. "This is a modernization of the FOIA law that focuses on standardization and transparency," said Rep. Mike Shirkey, R-Clarklake, the bill's sponsor. "The bill is aimed at the...

The Times Of Israel is reporting that a team of negotiators led by White House adviser Valerie Jarrett has been conducting secret talks with Iran about it's nuclear weapons program for the past year. The report states the deal submitted in Geneva earlier this month was a direct result of these secret year-long negotiations between teams headed by Jarrett and Iran's Ali Akbar Salehi. That deal was ultimately rejected when France and Israel raised strong objections,and talks are expected to resume this Wednesday. The White House was very quick to issue a categorical denial of the report. According to White...

Obama has apologized for claiming "if you like your health plan you can keep it," but Democrats to his left are standing their ground. Nancy Pelosi was unrepentant at a press conference on Friday, Politico reports. She said Obama had no need to apologize because his claim was "absolutely" precise. "There's nothing in the Affordable Care Act that says that your insurance company should cancel you," she told reporters. "That's not what the Affordable Care Act is about. It simply didn't happen."

The journalist Jonathan Cohn, an ardent supporter of Obamacare, recently wrote in The New Republic that problems with the rollout of the Affordable Care Act should be "an opportunity to have a serious conversation about the law's tradeoffs — the one that should have happened a while ago." Cohn is right that there was no serious conversation about those tradeoffs back when Congress was considering the law's passage in 2009 and 2010. But why was that? It was because President Obama and his Democratic allies could not speak seriously — and honestly — about those tradeoffs and still pass their...

CBS journalist Major Garrett grilled Barack Obama at a White House news conference, Thursday. On the subject of ObamaCare's disastrous rollout, the reporter repeatedly zeroed in on what the President knew and when: "You said after the law was implemented or signed, if like your plan, you can keep it. Americans believed you, sir, when you said that to them over and over."[See video below. MP3 audio here.] Garrett pushed, "Do you not believe, sir, the American people deserve a deeper, more transparent accountability from you  as to why you said it over and over and when your own statistics,...

The Environmental Protection Agency delayed releasing emails from former administrator Lisa Jackson’s secret account to congressional investigators after conferring with the White House, top Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and Senate Committee on Environment and Public works said. Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) in a letter released Friday subpoenaed EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy for emails with White House officials regarding the agency’s response to congressional requests. “Troubling information has recently been brought to my attention that raises questions about the reasons for EPA’s lack of cooperation with the Committee,” Issa wrote. “An email produced in...

As NewsBusters has been reporting, CBS News has been one of the press outlets totally willing to expose the disaster that is the ObamaCare rollout. On Monday, Sharyl Attkisson did a fabulous report on the CBS Evening News revealing that “four days before the launch the government took an unusual step: it granted itself a waiver to launch the website with a level of uncertainty deemed as a high security risk” (video follows with transcript and commentary)...

President Barack Obama told his enthusiastic supporters Monday night that he never promised what video recordings show him promising at least 29 times. The videos show Obama promising 300 million Americans that “if you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan, period.” (snip)