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WASHINGTON (CBS DC) – A new book covering the 2012 presidential campaign uncovers a series of scathing remarks from political figures, but one alleged comment has stirred controversy around President Barack Obama and his administration’s use of targeted drone strikes. Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s book “Double Down: Game Change 2012” notes President Obama commenting on drone strikes, reportedly telling his aides that he’s “really good at killing people.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------snip---------------------------------------- The Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that a total of 2,528-3,648 people have been killed by CIA drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004, and between 416-948 of them being civilians....

Here are 10 historical slang terms and euphemisms for infidelity that you probably won’t see in headlines today.1. Carrying tackle: Used primarily in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a man having an indiscreet affair was said to be carrying tackle. Tackle was also used to describe flashy or expensive clothing.2. Groping for trout in a peculiar river: A Shakespearean joke used in Measure for Measure, where groping describes a method of fishing by feeling for them in the water with the hands; peculiar was already in use to describe a mistress, much in the same way a cat...

Kirsten Powers in Christianity Today: Just seven years ago, if someone had told me that I’d be writing for Christianity Today magazine about how I came to believe in God, I would have laughed out loud. If there was one thing in which I was completely secure, it was that I would never adhere to any religion — especially to evangelical Christianity, which I held in particular contempt…. I remember walking into the Bible study. I had a knot in my stomach. In my mind, only weirdoes and zealots went to Bible studies. I don’t remember what was said that...

From the stage, Cartwright said President Obama “was out over his ski tips” when he said Americans would be able to keep their health-care plans if they liked them. In reality, “if you like your policy, and it still remains grandfathered in, and it doesn’t change, and it applies within the law, then you can keep it,” he said. “And he should have said that.” “Shoulda, woulda, coulda!” a woman shouted from the front rows.

It really is hysterical listening to liberal Hollywoodans talk about politics. Take for example actor/director Rob Reiner - made famous by his role as Meathead in the legendary sitcom All in the Family - claiming on HBO's Real Time Friday ("Overtime" web segment) that Barack Obama politically "is right around where Reagan was" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

WEST HOLLYWOOD (CBSLA.com) — Authorities say a man whose costume caught fire at the West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval has died. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies said in a department statement that the incident in the 8500 block of Santa Monica Boulevard occurred about 10:25 p.m. Thursday. Family have identified the victim as 51-year-old Gilbert Estrada. He was taken to Cedars-Sinai Hospital and succumbed to his injuries Friday. According to his family, Estrada was seriously burned on his torso and face. The statement said that detectives were seeking the public’s help to determine the source of the ignition. Anyone with information...

Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer put a pox on both the houses of the government shutdown and the troubled Obamacare rolllout on Sunday morning, comparing the twin disasters to the film Dumb and Dumber, and assigning them the status of Worse and Worser. “Is ‘worser’ a word?” Schieffer wondered. “Turns out it is. We looked it up. The shutdown was the worst, but this thing is worser.” “It was the Washington we’ve come to know: all talk, all the time,” Schieffer continued, denouncing both the poor rollout and the critics who were “foaming at the mouth” over it. “But...

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 2 (UPI) -- Sex workers in California held an event to get colleagues to sign up for healthcare under the Affordable Care Act, which they say will be beneficial to them. The registration drive took place last week in San Francisco and was dubbed the "Healthy Ho's Party," CNNMoney reported. "Jolene," a sex worker who volunteered at the event, said she has already enrolled through the California exchange and was at the event to help others through the process. "I am here mostly to put my skill at filling out bureaucratic forms to use," Jolene said. Jolene...

Some say it's not an opiate painkiller like Oxy, but Klonopin. And doctors are doling it out like candy, causing a surge of hellish withdrawals, overdoses and deaths.You could argue that the most dangerous “drug” in the world is the venom from a jellyfish known as the Sea Wasp, whose sting can kill a human being in four minutes—up to 100 humans at a time. Potassium chloride, which is used to trigger cardiac arrest and death in the 38 states of the U.S. that enforce the death penalty is also pretty deadly . But when it comes to prescription drugs...

On Sunday’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan argued that the tea party was a new fixture in American politics, a movement that doesn’t want to usurp a major political party but eliminate it. The comment came during a discussion of electoral forces going into the 2014 midterms, with former Bush consultant Matthew Dowd arguing that demographics were shifting in the Democratic Party’s favor. “Candidates matter,” ABC News’ Jonathan Karl responded. “They’ve nominated far-right candidates.” “Lesson for the tea party?” Stephanopoulos asked. “A lot of people may be cruisin’ for a brusin’,” Noonan replied. “Big...

It seems that every day brings new claims and counter-claims about who’s spying on whom. Governments are trying to limit the damage, but that damage is not limited to governments, expert Jeremie Zimmermann told DW.… It’s something of historical amplitude and we still need to take some distance to be able to understand what is exactly going on. What we see is the unraveling of the very infrastructure for a total surveillance society that we are realizing, day by day, is already deployed all around the world under our feet. The infrastructure for surveilling everything about everybody all the time....

Obama Accused of Military 'Purge' The United States military is being "purged" of officers suspected of disloyalty to or disagreement with the Obama administration, several sources charge. "We recognize President Obama is the commander-in-chief and that throughout history presidents from Lincoln to Truman have seen fit to remove military commanders they view as inadequate or insubordinate," Investor's Business Daily (IBD) observed. "Yet what has happened to our officer corps since President Obama took office is viewed in many quarters as unprecedented, baffling, and even harmful to our national security posture." Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely believes Obama is...

The Scrapbook was understandably intrigued when Cass Sunstein, a former Obama White House official and former Harvard law professor, published a Bloomberg.com column headlined “How the Alger Hiss Case Explains the Tea Party.” If you know anything about the famous perjury trial of the high-ranking State Department official and Soviet spy, the headline might seem to suggest that Sunstein is admitting the Tea Party has correctly identified insidious political threats. Needless to say, that is not Sunstein’s point. He spends most of the column recapping the saga of how Time magazine writer Whittaker Chambers accused Hiss, who was one of...

What do people around the world really think about a woman’s place in the world? Google knows! And any Internet user can easily find out. Just type in the two words “women should” into the search engine, and Google’s auto-complete function will come up with a selection of startling suggestions: “Women should… know their place… not work… stay at home… not speak in church…” You get similar results from the US version of Google’s competitor, Yahoo. DW asked Google Germany why this should be. “The suggestions are generated automatically based on many different factors, including the popularity of particular search...

Extend daylight savings time for the entire year. More useful light in the day and less energy use. Daylight savings time was instituted by congress in 1918 to make better use of daylight hours to benefit the economy and to save energy by having daylight hours during the most productive time of the day. Standard time, when the clocks go back an hour, begins in the first Sunday of November and serves no purpose. Standard time simply means early morning hours are in daylight, however sunset and darkness greet Americans at or about 5pm. Americans would much prefer to have...

The Senate’s No. 3 Democrat Charles Schumer (N.Y.) endorsed Hillary Clinton for president on Saturday as he urged her to make another run for the White House. Schumer announced his endorsement at the Iowa Democratic Party’s Jefferson Jackson dinner Saturday, declaring his “full and unwavering support” for the former secretary of State and New York senator three years before the 2016 election. “Run, Hillary, run. If you run, you’ll win and we’ll all win,” Schumer said, according to excerpts of his speech released by his office. “2016 is Hillary’s time. And our nation will be all the better for it,”...

It was quite the weekend of, shall we say, managing expectations in Washington. Erika already pointed out that the original roll out for the whole, “if you like your plan” may have been questioned internally by subject matter experts and advisors, but hey… that didn’t matter. See, we never really meant all the plans. Just the good ones. Another theme you previously heard from administration officials over and over again dealt with how many people absolutely, positively, without a doubt would need to be enrolled in the program in order for it to be able to stand on its own...

“These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.” ~ Erdogan, PM of Turkey Turkey took another step backwards this week … lurching toward Sharia … when 4 female MPs marked the end of a ban enforced since the early days of the Turkish Republic. The female MPs were wearing headscarves, as they walked into Turkey’s parliament in Ankara on Oct. 31st, designating the end of a prohibition vigorously imposed since the dawn of a secular Turkey. On its face, this step...

When the Obama administration first proposed its “cash for clunkers” plan in 2009, the reaction was generally favorable. Congress would spend $2.85 billion to encourage drivers to swap their old gas guzzlers for newer, more fuel-efficient cars. … But, as it turns out, the critics were on to something. A new analysis from the Brookings Institution’s Ted Gayer and Emily Parker found that the program was fairly inefficient as economic stimulus and mostly pulled forward auto sales that would have happened anyway. It also cut greenhouse-gas emissions a bit—the equivalent of taking up to 5 million cars off the road...

Nearly 1,500 priceless paintings including works by Picasso and Matisse that were stolen by the Nazis have been discovered in a flat in Munich, a news report said Sunday. -excerpt- The report said the works were thought to be worth around one billion euros ($1.3 billion dollars) on today's market.