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President Obama held a “rare” Saturday-night meeting “convening national security staffers and public health officials to discuss the threat of Ebola.” Twitchy reported that the president was golfing earlier in the day, which might help explain why the meeting had to be held late at night. Golf first, Ebola second? President Obama had an emergency #Ebola meeting Saturday night. Check out this EXCLUSIVE photo from inside the W.H.! pic.twitter.com/4ZwlWVFYXs— Caleb Howe (@CalebHowe) October 19, 2014

"Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Thomas Frieden began his grilling Thursday on Capitol Hill with a stark admission that his agency is still searching for ways to combat the Ebola virus as it burrows into the United States. Two members of Congress are calling for his resignation, and the White House began the torturous process of throwing him under the disease-control bus on Thursday afternoon, saying that Frieden is 'taking responsibility' for his agency's screwups. 'We're always open to ideas for what we can do to keep Americans safe,' Frieden said in his opening statement, departing from...

I knew Democrats would start flipping on travel restrictions soon but I didn’t expect O’s own mouthpiece to lead the charge. We’re still in the early stages, though, so Carney’s statement here is carefully qualified: He mentions “flight restrictions,” which may or may not mean an outright travel ban, and he suggests that as only one of a variety of “substantive actions” that might be taken, like, say, moving sick patients to a hospital that can better handle Ebola.Which, it so happens, is exactly what the CDC is going to do. BREAKING: Nina Pham to be transported to NIH...

Former governor and 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney tells an Obama joke that is drawing roars of laughter from GOP audiences. Romney's story, which nails the president's weakness, involves golf champion Phil Mickelson and the grand slam tennis great Andre Agassi. As he tells it, Obama goes to a bank to cash a check, but without any ID on him. The teller says he can't cash it without identification, pointing out that Mickelson proved who he was by tapping a golf ball into a cup, and Agassi did it by belting a tennis ball into a tiny target. "Is...

White House journalists are creating an alternative system for distributing their media “pool” reports in response to the Obama administration’s involvement in approving and disapproving certain content in official reports. A small group of reporters initiated an online forum this month in which they shared “pool” information among themselves, without White House involvement. The forum was set up by the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), which negotiates with the White House’s press staff over access for journalists. Pool reports — those summaries of the president’s public appearances that go to the news media at large and are used in countless...

President Obama needs to shake up his White House staff to give new life to his presidency, top Democratic strategists and former White House veterans say. They argue Obama needs an infusion of talent if he hopes to recover over his final two years in office. One prominent party strategist said Obama “should take a flamethrower to his office.” “He needs dramatic change — it’s not even a debatable point,” the strategist said. “The general consensus that the president is surrounded by people who do him more harm than good because they are more focused on pleasing him than they...

Republican Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts said Friday that he thinks the IRS targeting scandal was driven by Valerie Jarrett’s office in the White House, according to information that he saw that Democrats tried to “whitewash.” Roberts told talk radio host Hugh Hewitt that he participated in a Senate Finance Committee investigation into the IRS scandal but “the effort was made by the majority, by the Democrats in the Congress, to simply end that investigation,” which he called a “whitewash.” “I’m convinced that even Valerie Jarrett was involved,” Roberts said. “I think this was White House-driven. I think all of the...

Two years ago a slew of Secret Service agents got busted for hiring prostitutes while on an official trip in Cartagena, Colombia. That scandal erupted after an agent failed to properly pay a woman for her services. They were fired and the White House denied aides had any involvement. Now, the Washington Post is out with a stunning report about the scandal not only detailing that former White House presidential advance team member and volunteer Jonathan Dach officially registered a prostitute as an overnight guest in his hotel room, but that White House aides knew about Dach's actions and interfered with...

David Nieland, who led the investigation for the DHS inspector general’s office, later told Senate aides examining the investigation that his superiors had asked him to keep those details out of the report. He also said that the request to leave the information out came from his superiors shortly after they met with Janet Napolitano, then the secretary of homeland security.Nieland also said that he had been told to delay the release of the report until after the election. A Washington Post story published Wednesday night alleges that the White House did not rigorously investigate information linking a volunteer for...

The White House announced today that starting in January 2015, a new Immigration-Travel Center will be set up at the White House for individuals traveling to and from West Africa. Travelers will arrive at Washington Dulles airport and will be shuttle for free to the center. They will be processed through the front door and into the left wing with final process taking place in the Green Room since an individual who was unauthorized already made it that far anyway. A special parking area will be set up on Pennsylvania Ave. for cars and shuttles transporting travelers from the West...

Late last night the Washington Post broke a story about a connection between White House aides and the 2012 Secret Service prostitution scandal. When the scandal broke two years ago, the White House denied involvement or knowing about the details of what happened. The Post story proves otherwise and provides evidence a White House volunteer officially checked a prostitute into his hotel room in Cartagena, Colombia. The report also details threats made against the Inspector General, who was asked to delay the release of embarrassing and damaging information about the connection between the White House and the scandal until after...

At first, this story from the Washington Post seems impossible to believe. After all, the White House insists that they were cleared of any involvement in the Cartagena prostitute scandal by, er, their own internal investigation — a claim that White House aide Eric Schultz repeated to the Post’s Carol Leonnig and David Nakamura. That settles it, right? Wrong: But new details drawn from government documents and interviews show that senior White House aides were given information at the time suggesting that a prostitute was an overnight guest in the hotel room of a presidential advance-team member — yet that...

It shouldn’t be surprising that Republicans are just as angry as Michelle Obama is reported to have been about the Secret Service’s failure to keep an intruder out of the White House, and its four-day failure to realize that a sniper’s gunshots hit the first family’s residence. Not everybody evidently feels this way when a Republican is in the White House. The New York Times movie critic’s verdict on the 2006 movie: “‘The Death of a President’ is, in the end, neither terribly outrageous nor especially heroic; it’s a thought experiment that traffics in received ideas.” ... If Baker thinks...

Top White House officials on Friday worked to reassure the American public that the national response to Ebola is under control. Leaders of the country’s health, defense and military branches stressed that they are taking the right steps to contain the spread of the deadly virus, which was first diagnosed in the U.S. on Tuesday. “We know how to do this, and we will do it again,” Lisa Monaco, assistant to the president for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, said at a press briefing. “It’s very important to remind the American people that U.S. has the most capable healthcare system and...

Late Friday afternoon White House Homeland Security Advisor Lisa Monaco addressed the media on Ebola. Monaco said "we are not facing just a health crisis, we are facing a national security priority." Monaco said the Ebola virus is "as important as any threat we're facing." LISA MONACO, WH HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISOR: As the president has said, we are not facing just a health crisis, we are facing a national security priority and it's one that he has instructed his team is as important as any threat we're facing. Since this outbreak began in March the president has directed that we...

Senior Administration Officials to Hold Briefing on the U.S. Government Response to the Ebola Pandemic

On Thursday morning, I received my first well-produced Facebook message mocking those deluded souls, presumably on the right, who are worried about the spread of Ebola. The only thing that surprised me about the message was that I had not seen one sooner. The same people who gave us homophobia and Islamophobia (not to mention racism, sexism, classism, xenophobia, nativism, and climate denial) are about to give us Ebolaphobia. As former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel notoriously said (while plagiarizing Winston Churchill), "You never let a serious crisis go to waste.” The Obama White House will exploit this crisis,...

The White House sprayed by bullets. A hospital guard with a criminal record and a gun the Secret Service didn't know about riding on an elevator with the president in Atlanta. The fence-jumper who made it all the way into the East Room of the White House. Secret Service Director Julia Pierson had no choice but to resign on Wednesday afternoon. She did it a week or two late, but she did the right thing. The vaunted federal agency -- whose core duty is to protect the president of the United States, his family and his home - has become...

A man who jumped the White House fence allegedly knocked over a female officer at the mansion's double doors before he dashed into the ornate East Room. An inquiry continues into how Omar Gonzalez, 42, made it into the White House. Investigators are looking through an elaborate closed-circuit video system showing the entire incident, a Secret Service source told CNN. Authorities said the Iraq war veteran had a knife in his pocket when he ran into the White House, where he was later subdued after a wild chase. The officer he met at the doorway got up, chased him and...

When a man jumped over the White House fence, ran across the lawn and entered the residence, the Secret Service failed and failed again. One of the most conspicuous and surprising failures was that though it had armed agents on the ground and snipers on the roof, no one fired a shot to stop him. In fact, the agency bragged about not using their guns, saying that "the officers showed tremendous restraint and discipline in dealing with this subject." The agents didn't shoot Omar Gonzalez because they "apparently concluded that he was not armed and did not appear to be...