“You put that little phone in the charger and it’s facing you—anyone can watch you while you sleep. We’re entering 1984 .”

Beck on the Spitzer scandal: "Is it a coincidence that [the Spitzer prostitution scandal] happened as he goes after all of the banks and those on Wall Street—the rich and the powerful, with vast connections—and he says to them, 'I'm gonna take you down'?"

On General John R. Allen: "How did they get General [John R.] Allen's information? Remember, he gets in trouble because he goes over to Afghanistan, and, what happens? He said the administration is lying, that what's happening over in Afghanistan is not going well. All of a sudden his private emails are exposed. How did that happen?"

And on the David Petraeus affair: "How about General Petraeus? The guy who says, 'I'm gonna stand up in Benghazi.' All of a sudden his emails are released and we find out he's having an affair. Are you kidding me?"

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After letting it play out in Congress, Obama goes big on immigration at what Republicans say is the worst possible time.

U.S. President Barack Obama is introduced by Tolu Olubunmi to speak in support of the U.S. Senate's bipartisan immigration reform bill while in the East Room of the White House in Washington, June 11, 2013.

Via: Larry Downing / Reuters

WASHINGTON — As a fragile bipartisan effort to pass sweeping immigration legislation through the Senate reaches the final stretch, President Obama, who has been deliberately absent from the debate until now, has reemerged, hoping to cross the finish line along with the lawmakers who have championed the bill.

But Republicans who favor reform are eyeing the president's last-minute immigration push warily, worried that his presence in the process could threaten the delicate compromises Republicans and Democrats have made over the past several months.

"Mr. Obama adds nothing to the immigration debate at this point — not from a ideological perspective or tactical log-rolling perspective — and his entry at this point can only upset the tenuous balance negotiators are trying to create," said Jonathan Collegio, spokesperson for American Crossroads. The Karl Rove-founded campaign spending group is running ads in support of the Gang of Eight immigration bill currently working its way through the Senate.

Collegio said the process has a better chance of succeeding without the president's help.

"If he had a record of bringing folks on the hill together this entry would make sense, but Obama is clearly the least skilled congressional negotiator since Carter and his very presence will only hurt the work taking place on Capitol Hill," he said.

While Obama has stayed out of the immigration fray publicly this year, White House officials have been working on the bill behind the scenes, making phone calls and holding private meetings with various stakeholders to try to get a deal done. Supporters of the president have argued letting Congress work out the bill was the best idea for the time, keeping Obama — the GOP's favorite political enemy — as far away from the debate as possible.

But that stance changed this week as Obama began pushing for the Gang of Eight bill specifically, tying himself to the legislation in a way that makes some of the bill's Republican supporters nervous. On Saturday, Obama touted the bill in his weekly address to the nation, and on Tuesday he held a high-profile event at the White House. Obama gave the bill a shoutout.

"The bill before the Senate isn't perfect. It's a compromise. Nobody will get everything they want – not Democrats, not Republicans, not me," Obama said Saturday. "But it is a bill that's largely consistent with the principles I've repeatedly laid out for commonsense immigration reform."

In a speech Tuesday, Obama focused on DREAMers, the undocumented immigrants brought to America as children. Behind him was a bipartisan coalition of leaders, including the presidents of the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber Of Commerce. Both groups are supporting immigration reform, and Obama hopes their faces on the bill will make it easier for Congress to support it.

As they try to piece together a coalition in support of comprehensive reform legislation that many in the the GOP base don't want, Republicans don't think Obama's touting the bill will help them get it over the finish line. But they do think that the president could help by telling Democrats to accept amendments they don't want in order to make the immigration bill more House GOP-friendly.

"Without President Obama engaged, immigration reform is now on track in the Senate and is moving forward in the House," said Emily Benavides, a spokesperson for the American Action Network, another Republican spending group pushing for an immigration bill. "Reform would stand a much better chance if he devoted his time not to campaign-like posturing but to convincing his old colleagues in the Senate to support some very common sense amendments to strengthen the legislation currently being considered."

Ana Navarro, the Republican strategist and director of Hispanic outreach for John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign, said it's up to Republicans to convince their peers to vote for immigration reform, and that there's little difference the president can make in the negotiations at this point.

"The president has little if any leverage with Republicans not already on board with immigration reform. Getting the Republican votes we need on immigration is our headache and challenge," she said. "President Obama has one job, making sure the Red State Democrats are voting yes."

Obama's allies said it's too late for Republicans to blame reform failure on Obama. Gabriela Domenzain, Hispanic outreach spokesperson for Obama's 2012 campaign, said that it made sense for Obama "to stay 100% away" from early direct negotiations, but with the bill written and under debate with a bipartisan stamp of approval, it's time for Obama to put pressure on Congress.

"There's no way that the Republicans can blame opposition on the fact that it's the president's bill," Domenzain said. Americans, who polling shows want immigration reform, won't have a nuanced take on Republican opposition, she said. Defeat of immigration reform will be blamed on blanket opposition to Obama, she said, not on anything Obama did.

"The president could propose more sunshine the House will oppose it," she said.

“There is nothing special about the timing other than we have been aggressively pursuing Hezbollah’s financial networks and the facilitators for their financial activity in Lebanon for some time now,” officials says.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah delivers a broadcast speech during a rally in Lebanon in May.

Via: Hussein Malla / AP

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department announced on Tuesday it is putting sanctions on four Lebanese citizens accused of acting as "revenue supporters" of Hezbollah in West Africa.

The Treasury designated "four revenue supporters of Hezbollah responsible for aiding Hezbollah's attempts to extend its malign influence throughout west Africa," said Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David S. Cohen in a conference call with reporters. The four were operating on behalf of the organization in Sierra Leone, Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal, and Gambia, Cohen said.

The United States is sending a "strong message that it can no longer behave with impunity at home or abroad," Cohen said.

The new sanctions on Hezbollah, which the United States has designated as a terrorist organization, come as the Syrian rebels are losing ground in the civil war against the Hezbollah-tied Syrian government. Meanwhile, the White House is reportedly considering arming the rebels and a decision could be made as early as this week.

Cohen said the new sanctions aren't intended specifically to coincide with what's happening in Syria.

"There is nothing special about the timing other than we have been aggressively pursuing Hezbollah's financial networks and the facilitators for their financial activity in Lebanon for some time now," Cohen said.

Asked if it was "counterproductive" to continue designating Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, Cohen responded, "Hezbollah is a terrorist organization ... that's what it is," and that the group remains an "active and threatening" force.

“The answer to this delicate security dilemma is neither blank checks nor blanket opposition.”

Via: Cliff Owen / AP

Former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton may be keeping mum about the Obama administration's latest domestic spying scandal, but in the past the potential Democratic presidential candidate has taken vastly different positions on government's ability to monitor private citizens.

Throughout her career Clinton has found herself on both sides of the security fence: railing and voting against Bush-era spying efforts as a senator while working with those same programs as a member of Obama's inner circle.

For instance in August 2007, during the midst of presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton voted against the Protect America Act. That amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), lead to the NSA to begin their data collection program known as PRISM. Later, after Clinton had dropped out, she voted against the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 which allowed the NSA to collect phone records while giving immunity to cooperating telecom companies.

"I believe strongly that we must modernize our surveillance laws in order to provide intelligence professionals the tools needed to fight terrorism and make our country more secure," Clinton said in a statement on why she voted against the FISA Amendments Act. "However, any surveillance program must contain safeguards to protect the rights of Americans against abuse, and to preserve clear lines of oversight and accountability over this administration."

"Congress must vigorously check and balance the president even in the face of dangerous enemies and at a time of war," Clinton continued. "That is what sets us apart. And that is what is vital to ensuring that any tool designed to protect us is used and used within the law for that purpose and that purpose alone."

Clinton used the issue of mass surveillance as a fundraising tool during her presidential campaign as well, citing in one email "a secret program that spies on Americans!" to attack the Bush Administration.

Clinton, attacked the Bush Administration for warrantless surveillance and lack of Congressional oversight throughout her time in the Senate arguing in a 2006 speech that "the FISA courts have a proven track record of being able to protect our security and privacy simultaneously."

Clinton added that "the answer to this delicate security dilemma is neither blank checks nor blanket opposition; it is to use the judicial and legislative mechanisms we have to build a consensus about what is necessary, what is legal, and what is effective."

During her time in the Obama administration, however, Clinton oversaw the State Department's involvement in a host of intelligence programs, including PRISM.

The Washington Post reported Monday the FISA Court approves 99.97% of government's requests for warrants.

“We’ll probably have to take three extra ethics training courses this year,” one employee grouses on Facebook.

On Monday, Booz Allen Hamilton took to Facebook to confirm that Edward Snowden, the NSA source, was one of its employees and to condemn his actions.

This prompted those with a connection to the company to jump into the conversation.

And some strange job applications.

It also led to some current and former Booz Allen employees venting on Facebook. One was more concerned about Snowden's salary than his leaking NSA data.

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It’s Tebow time.

President Obama spoke in favor of the U.S. Senate's bipartisan immigration reform bill Tuesday morning.

All three cable news channels were covering his speech ... at first.

But then CNN cut away to New England coach Bill Belichick's first press conference since it was announced the Patriots signed Tim Tebow. Fox started talking about Plan B. MSNBC stuck to Obama.

Reporters asked Belichick 14 questions about Tebow. The last question was about how he felt about Tebow Tebowing. Belichick just said, "I think we’ve already talked enough about him."

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E.W. Jackson’s self-published book Ten Commandments to an Extraordinary Life has a big error on the cover. Commandments — not “comandments.”

The president popped into an off-the-record briefing with reporters Monday.

Via: Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

WASHINGTON — President Obama held an off-the-record meeting with select reporters from some of the nation's largest print and online outlets Monday, in the White House's latest effort to placate an increasingly restive press corps.

White House officials regularly meet with reporters for so-called "background briefing sessions," where the attendees cannot be mentioned by name nor quoted directly, but Monday's meeting was different. Initially billed as a conversation with White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, the president made a surprise appearance — a very unusual move — and the White House placed the proceedings off the record beforehand. The meeting came amid a series of scandals crashing over the White House that has placed the administration on defense in a way it hasn't been until now.

Relations between the press and the White House have been especially fraught since last month's revelation that the Justice Department had covertly collected phone records from Associated Press reporters in pursuit of locating the source of a national security leak. When the Justice Department sought to hold an off-the-record meeting with journalists to discuss its investigation, news outlets pushed back, with The New York Times publicly refusing to attend.

Reporters who attended Monday's session with the president were loathe to discuss it with BuzzFeed, citing the White House's stipulation that the meeting remain off the record. But the session came after the White House announced a "travel/photo lid" for the day — White House parlance for no more events, and the signal for the pool reporter to go home — and reporters from The New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, Time, McClatchy, Politico, Tribune, NPR, Bloomberg, USA Today, AFP, Yahoo and other outlets were milling around the briefing room waiting to be called in. In total, about two dozen reporters were included. (BuzzFeed was not invited to the meeting, although a reporter, who did not know the president would be present, requested to be included.)

New York Times White House reporter Peter Baker said reporters had not been told that Obama would be in the session, and that if he had known, he and his editors would have reconsidered whether to attend.

"If we had, I think we would have had a conversation here in our office first about whether to attend or not. We tend to evaluate these on a case-by-case basis," Baker told BuzzFeed. "Our concern about off-the-record sessions with the president is that they not become substitutes for opportunities to ask questions and get answers on the record, which after all is our job."

Off-the-record meetings like Monday's — and a similar one with broadcast outlets a couple weeks earlier — are a historical traditional that has dwindled since the days when John F. Kennedy regularly entertained favored reporters in his office. Baker and others said the meeting was valuable from a journalistic perspective, giving reporters a chance to hear what the president is thinking directly from the president's own mouth — even if they can't share that wisdom directly with their readers.

Makes us scream.

Howard Dean was known to have glorious, flowing locks as a young man.

Source: time.com

Which were cropped into a more respectable 'Kennedy' cut in his young political life.

Source: leroyspinkfist.blogspot.com

As governor of Vermont, Dean started to turn into a silver fox.

Source: en.wikipedia.org

This lasted through his entire presidential run.

Source: www2.ljworld.com

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The legal organization is suing on its own behalf — because it is a Verizon customer.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee April 18, 2013 in Washington, DC.

Via: Win McNamee / Getty Images

WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union is asking federal courts to declare the recently revealed phone records-tracking operation of the National Security Agency to be unconstitutional — and that records already collected be "purge[d] from their possession."

What's unusual about the lawsuit — filed Tuesday against James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, and others — is that the ACLU and its New York chapter have filed it on their own behalf, as current and former Verizon telephone customers. Moreover, as they do legal work, they note in their complaint that even "the mere fact that Plaintiffs have communicated with ... individuals is sensitive or privileged."

Although the program was reveled through publication by The Guardian of an order to Verizon from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the ACLU did not attempt to address that order in that court, whose decisions are not public. It instead filed a separate lawsuit in open court, attempting to have the program declared both illegal under current law and unconstitutional under both the First and Fourth amendments.

What The ACLU Says Makes The Program Unconstitutional:

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They argue that the NSA spying programs were wrong but say whether Snowden broke the law is a separate issue.

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul

Via: Reed Saxon / AP

WASHINGTON — Libertarian Republicans may be unified in their distaste for domestic spying operations, but so far they're divided — or avoiding the subject altogether — when it comes to whether the source of leaks about the programs is a hero or a traitor.

For some, it appears that Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who exposed a series of domestic programs, may be a traitor.

"From what I know, yes, but I usually don't call people a traitor without knowing all the facts," Sen. Mike Lee said Tuesday. "From what I've been told, the guy broke a whole bunch of laws, and it's a problem."

Others, like Sen. Rand Paul, argue the programs he leaked may have been technically legal but the laws that allow them to exist need to be changed.

"I think it's a side point, I think the Bill of Rights is being violated, our privacy is being violated," Sen. Rand Paul told CBS on Tuesday when asked if he felt Snowden was a hero. "We need to hold the president accountable and say, look, we don't want the government following us around every day. When people choose civil disobedience, they are at their wits' ends. They have no choice."

"Personally, I'm trying to work within the law and change the law," he added.

Some are keeping quiet altogether. Sen. Marco Rubio, who sits on the intelligence committee, said there was still an ongoing investigation and he did not want to comment on Snowden yet.

But former Rep. Ron Paul, Sen. Paul's father and the original libertarian standard-bearer in the House, praised Snowden and the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald for bringing the story to light.

"They have done a great service to the American people by exposing the truth about what our government is doing in secret," the elder Paul said.

Snowden, a now-former defense contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton, leaked information to the Guardian and Washington Post and has fled to Hong Kong. Snowden's leak revealed court documents allowing the government to collect so-called metadata of millions of Verizon customers and exposed the existence of a program called "PRISM" that collects information from nine tech companies.

Lee, a Utah Republican, has introduced legislation with Sen. Jeff Merkley to declassify significant portions of secret court rulings that authorized both programs.

"It will help ensure that the government makes sensitive decisions related to surveillance by applying legal standards that are known to the public. Particularly where our civil liberties are at stake, we must demand no less of our government," Lee said in a statement.

Rep. Justin Amash said he was working on a lawsuit with several other members of Congress to try to get more disclosure from the FISA court orders and "examine the scope of the Patriot Act as it's being applied by courts."

"I do think it's important that the American people have a government that's abiding by the rule of law and following the Constitution," he said. "If these disclosures help us do a better job of following the intent of our founders and the spirit of the Bill of Rights, then that's a good thing."

Amash said that the disclosures of the surveillance programs were overall a positive thing, but the legality of what Snowden did was a "separate question."

Republican leadership, however, isn't mincing words about Snowden. After Snowden revealed himself to be the source of the leak, House Speaker John Boehner called him a "traitor," and Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he hoped Snowden would be "prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

Snowden has found a defender in Thomas Massie, a Kentucky congressman who told Roll Call on Monday he did not think Snowden should be prosecuted.

"Whether or not this program was authorized by Congress, it seems to me that this is an unconstitutional activity," Massie told the paper, "which would make it illegal, and he should have some kind of immunity."

After the fizzling-out of the Occupy Wall Street movement in America, protesters from New York arrive in Tunis and Istanbul. Familiar tent cities, different goals.

Protesters run as riot police fire teargas during a protest at Taksim Square in Istanbul on Tuesday.

Via: Osman Orsal / Reuters

WASHINGTON — Since the dissolution of the original Occupy Wall Street movement in New York and other American cities, some former occupiers have taken their tactics and ideology farther afield: The people who once slept in Zuccotti Park are now joining burgeoning protest movements across the globe, particularly in the Muslim world.

The bitter battle for Istanbul's Taksim Square — with its physical similarity to the seizure of a New York Park — is the highest profile of those battles, and one in which faces familiar from the New York streets have re-emerged. But it's not the only one: American activists got involved in movements in Egypt and Tunisia also this year. And though the goals of those protest movements have little to do with the aims of the American Occupy movement, the tent cities are familiar, and occupiers say they feel the beginnings of a kind of global solidarity.

"Several Occupy media activists have fundraised individually to travel to different Occupy protests around the world," said Justin Wedes, who was one of the principal media coordinators of the original Occupy Wall Street, in an email to BuzzFeed. "Our inter-connectedness and experience with tactical media — livestream, social media, etc. — help budding protests connect into the global Occupy independent media network."

The authorities have also noticed the resemblance. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan specifically cited Occupy when condemning the demonstrations, which began in protest of a planned shopping mall in Istanbul's Gezi Park.

Wedes said activists in Taksim Square have welcomed outsiders warmly.

"There is a huge amount of global solidarity — organizers offer up housing, food, and security if we need it to provide independent media coverage of more dangerous situations," said Wedes, who was also recently in Egypt connecting with young activists there and giving a TED Talk.

"We've been received very positively, and everyone is anxious to support us in getting the word out and breaking the media blackout," Wedes said. "Why should we rely on mainstream media to report these things and hold governments and their police forces accountable? They've proven time and time again that they'll collude with each other to block vital information from us and distort the facts on the ground. So strap on our cameras and livestreams and go!"

The livestreamers include prolific videographer Tim Pool, a common sight at demonstrations in the U.S. Pool is covering the protests for Vice.

Jenna Pope, an activist and photojournalist who normally travels around the U.S. photographing protests, was planning to cover protest activity around the G8 summit when she changed her mind last-minute.

"All the stuff in Turkey happened, and I decided I had to be there," Pope told BuzzFeed in a Skype interview. She arrived in Turkey last Wednesday after making sure she would be able to plug into the activist network on the ground. The internet was instrumental in Pope's finding places to stay and people to meet in Turkey.

"Before I decided to come out here, I did not have a network," Pope said. "I use social media a lot, and I posted that I was considering coming out here. And all of a sudden I had tons of messages coming in from people I knew from New York and elsewhere connecting me with activists in Turkey."

Pope said she thought the Turkish protesters saw their American counterparts as peers, not as advisers or consultants flown into the event.

"I think they see us more as fellow participants," she said. "Obviously we can all learn from each other because we've all had different experiences. There's a lot of discussion and a lot of exchanging ideas."

Pope isn't sure how long she'll remain in Turkey. "I'm kind of just playing it by ear," she said.

Turkey "is becoming quite the destination spot lately," said Shawn Carrié, a New York occupier who was in Tunisia a couple months ago for four weeks with about a dozen other activists. The trip to Tunisia, which was scheduled around the World Social Forum, included about a dozen American activists. Carrié funded his own trip, but most of the others had their travels subsidized by a Brazilian group as part of the Forum.

"Tunisia was incredible; we managed to find really committed activists very much in line with what we do. Horizontalism is very important to them," he said, citing a main tenet of the Occupy organizational structure.

Carrié acknowledged that parachuting into foreign activist networks can have its difficulties.

"The language barrier is hard for most people — I really think you need to speak the language wherever you go, otherwise it's just small talk," Carrié said.

"But now we're able to actually able to call up people in Tunis and ask them if they want to plan a global day of action with us," he said. "Of course it's a very different political landscape there, but they're very much still struggling."

Carrié said the Americans had found kindred spirits in the Tunisians, whose own uprising in 2010 and 2011 was credited with setting off the Arab Spring.

"It's funny, in Tunis they talk about 'the revolution' the same way they talk about OWS here: 'Yeah, that happened, but where is it now?'" he said.

“Perjury is a serious crime. Mr. Clapper should resign immediately,” Amash says.

James Clapper, right, testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee on March 12.

Via: Susan Walsh / AP

WASHINGTON — Libertarian Rep. Justin Amash called on Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to resign on Wednesday after a week of revelations surrounding the National Security Agency's widespread surveillance of Americans.

"It now appears clear that the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, lied under oath to Congress and the American people," Amash wrote on his Facebook. "Members of Congress can't make informed decisions on intelligence issues when the head of the intelligence community willfully makes false statements. Perjury is a serious crime. Mr. Clapper should resign immediately."

Clapper's testimony before Congress in March has led to questions over whether he may have flatly lied about the NSA's data-mining programs. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat, asked Clapper if the NSA "collects any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Clapper answered, "No sir...not wittingly."

Last week, Amash's office circulated a letter among other members of Congress that demanded more answers from the administration about the spying program. The letter was sent to the FBI and NSA.

"The President has full faith in Director Clapper and his leadership of the Intelligence Community," National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden said when asked about Amash's statement.

“We don’t bid on big car plants here and shame on us.”

View Video ›

Via:

In a 2011 interview, Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe faulted Virginia for not bidding on his car company GreenTech Automative when he decided to build a plant for his company in Mississippi over Virginia.

"We don't bid on big car plants here and shame on us," McAuliffe said in response to a question about his company's plant being located in Mississippi. "You gotta incentivize. Mississippi gave me 200 free acres, they gave me tax incentives, they gave me the infrastructure to lead into the factory. This is what states do all over the country."

The comment stands in contrast with an April 2013 interview with Virginia's NBC affiliate, when McAuliffe was asked whether the state was in error for not offering an "incentive package" to build their plant there. "No, I never blamed Virginia," he said. "I live here, I want all future jobs here."

The independent fact-checking site Politifact said in a post in December "contrary to McAuliffe's claim, there is no evidence the state agency decided not to bid on the project."

McAuliffe's comment to NBC12 in April:

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Via:

The Bush center celebrated by wearing exuberant socks.

George H.W. Bush has a tendency to wear kickass socks.

Via: AP

So for his 89th birthday, the George Bush center asked people to tweet their socks with a birthday message for the former President and the hashtag #41s89th

Via: flickr.com

Former Bush cabinet members joined in.

Source: facebook.com

As did House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

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Bill Clinton told doctors he would not be refused and haggled his way into the operating room just before Chelsea was born. “Father of the Year.”

Via: Brendan Mcdermid / Reuters

The National Father's Day Committee named Bill Clinton "Father of the Year" Tuesday. During his acceptance speech, Clinton told the story of the day his daughter Chelsea was born. When he found out Hillary needed a C-section, doctors told Bill he wasn't allowed in the operating room.

Bill told them they better let him in or they'd be sorry.

In his acceptance speech, Clinton also recounted a touching story about Chelsea's birthday in 1980. "On the night she was born, I came home from Washington, D.C., from a governors' conference. And Hillary's water broke 15 minutes later," he said. Upon arriving at the hospital, the Clintons were told that the baby was in a breech position and would have to be delivered via Cesarean section — and that fathers weren't allowed in the operating room, he said.

The former president, who was the governor of Arkansas at the time, said he protested to the hospital staff. "If you send her into that room without me, I think you're making a big mistake … I want to see my daughter born," he recounted saying. Eventually, the doctors relented, he said. "They let me go in and hold Hillary's hand. I saw Chelsea come out, and it changed the hospital's policy on letting fathers into the delivery room when surgery was required. And from that day to this, I have believed without the shadow of a doubt that it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me."

“He has apologized and I apologize as well,” says Senator Jeff Flake.

WASHINGTON — Sen. Jeff Flake's high school-aged son Tanner used twitter to threaten the "faggot" who stole his bike that he "will find you, and … will beat the crap out of you," joked about an acquaintance stealing one-liners because he's Jewish, and went by the name "n1ggerkiller" in an online game.

"I'm very disappointed in my teenage son's words, and I sincerely apologize for the insensitivity. This language is unacceptable, anywhere. Needless to say, I've already spoken with him about this, he has apologized, and I apologize as well," Sen. Flake said in a statement to BuzzFeed.

Although Tanner has since locked his twitter account, a series of tweets from January and February show the Arizona Republican's son repeatedly using the slurs.

Additionally, Flake posted screenshots of scores from games on "Fun Run," a social gaming app. The screen shots show that Flake goes by the name of "n1ggerkiller."

UPDATE: A source points out that Flake's youtube comments are also littered with offensive language. A preliminary review of the hundreds of comments shows he repeatedly called other users "nigger" and "faggot," called Mexicans the "scum of the Earth" and on several occasions bragged that his father is a member of Congress.

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“This is putting American lives at risk and clearly done to hurt Americans,” King says of Greenwald’s scoops.

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WASHINGTON — Congressman Peter King (R-NY) called for the arrest not just of Edward Snowden but of Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who published Snowden's documents from the National Security Agency.

Fox News host Megyn Kelly asked King, "To take it another step and say the journalist who published the information, the guys who publish what he leaked, that they should face prosecution, that is news. Do you believe that? Stand by that? Both Greenwald and the Washington Post reporter?"

"I'm talking about Greenwald," King said. "Greenwald, not only did he disclose this information, he said he has names of CIA agents and assets around the world and threatening to disclose that. The last time that was done in this country, we saw the CIA agent murdered. I think it should be very targeted and very selective and a rare exception. In this case, when you have someone to disclose secrets like this and threatens to release more, yes, there has to be be — legal action should be taken against him."

Kelly asked again if Greenwald should be prosecuted for "what he's done so far."

"I think it should be considered," King said. "The reason I say it is, this is putting American lives at risk and clearly done to hurt Americans. To allow it to be done it will cause grave consequences to the United States. I'm tying the two together, and that shows his motivation."

This is not the first time King has applied this kind of rhetoric to a leak investigation. In 2006, he said the Department of Justice should prosecute journalists who publish sensitive national security leaks:

Armando Iannucci, creator and write of HBO’s Veep , sits down with BuzzFeed to talk politics and why he doesn’t pay close attention to what Joe Biden says.

Veep star Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Vice President Joe Biden. Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson.

Via: whitehouse.gov

WASHINGTON — It's no wonder that in Washington, D.C., a place where political (and self-) obsession is the norm, HBO's show Veep is a hit. The series, which follows fictional Vice President Selina Meyers (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and her staff, is so true to life, its creator Armando Iannucci said people in D.C. are constantly telling him which characters they identify with. And when Louis-Dreyfus went to visit the real Vice President Joe Biden, a staffer introduced himself as "the Dan of the office" — meaning Dan Egan, Meyer's overly ambitious deputy communications director.

"Everyone here knows a Jonah," Iannucci said in an interview with BuzzFeed, referencing Jonah Ryan, the annoying White House liaison who can tell you every time the president has so much as looked at him. "Gradually over a number of years, a picture built up of the type of people who are around senior political figures. You get to meet a certain type of chief of staff and communications director. It's not just what they say, it's how they say it."

Biden has even said he's a fan of the show, but Iannucci says he doesn't pay much attention to the VP's real-life (and often mockable) antics. Instead, he says he's fascinated by how people use the office and why in Washington, nothing seems to get done.

Iannucci is also responsible for the successful British show The Thick of It — a satire of British government. BuzzFeed sat down for an interview with Iannucci in Washington on Wednesday to chat about the difference between British and U.S politics, dysfunction on Capitol Hill, and what he's reading to keep up with the news. Below is a condensed and edited transcript of our conversation.

How much inspiration do you get from the current events, and dysfunction, in Washington?

Armando Iannucci: We wrote the series and recorded it some time ago, and it's sort of strangely mirroring what's going on. So we've got debt discussions, and breakdowns, and shutdowns, and now we're absorbed with a spy scandal. I'm a bit of a political geek anyway, so you tend to write how you think the rhythms of an administration will go. They'll make mistakes in the first year, gain some ground in the second year, and start enacting legislation in the third year, run for reelection, get reelected, and it starts to go south. Any president's second term ends up being quite messy. It never goes quite according to plan. So that's what I had in my head anyway, and the reality is really mirroring that.

Does having Joe Biden as the real vice president make what you do easier?

AI: It helps having him be out there because it helps remind people of the office. There was the old-fashioned view of the vice president that they didn't do much — like the [Walter] Mondales or the [Dan] Quayles — and actually that role has changed a lot. Al Gore was so close to Clinton; Dick Cheney was very powerful. What's funny about that office is it's entirely dependent on how close you are to the president, because the president decides what your role will be. If you get on with the president, that's great; if you fall out with the president, power can go away.

We're not out to say this is a particular historic figure like Joe Biden, so I'm not monitoring his moves. What does intrigue me is what kind of day he has — so I look at his diary, his daily engagement. Some days it can be a whole list of things, other days it just says "meeting with advisors," which sort of suggests sitting in a room watching the television.

What's interesting about him is he's been using his Senate experience to keep the channels open between the White House and Congress. Selina does that quite well, but the rug is pulled out from under her by the president. We wanted to show in the second season she has a bit more clout and power and influence. I remember reading about the previous debt-ceiling crisis and Biden had been tasked by Obama to head up a group, and they'd been having endless meetings — and yet the deal that was done was eventually between the president and the speaker. So all that dull, tedious work Biden had done was suddenly gone. Obama said, I have a better idea, so forget it.

Armando Iannucci

Via: Stephen Chernin / Reuters

What do you read to keep up with what's happening in D.C.?

AI: I read Playbook and have all the apps for the Hill and Politico and Washington Post. When I'm in the U.S., I get The New York Times every day. I watch a lot of Fox and just try and listen and see what people are talking about. I also do a lot of reading — not just contemporary stuff, but stuff from the '60s onward. I like reading about Lyndon Johnson because he was such a powerful figure in the Senate, and then he was sitting in the office waiting for the call and then became the most powerful guy in the world.

Sometimes if there's a big issue where there's lot of support, like immigration or gun control, just watching the dynamic play out in the House or Senate: Should we try and get a huge majority to force the House to pass it, or are we going to water it down so much that no one likes it? So rather than read everything, I tend to pick a topic and watch them in great detail.

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Says spying program has foiled “dozens” of terrorist plots.

Source: Mark Wilson

WASHINGTON — The director of the National Security Agency defended its controversial surveillance programs during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Wednesday, as the questioning was repeatedly wrested away from the stated topic of cyber threats and to discussion of the NSA's data mining practices.

In response to tough questioning from a handful of senators, NSA and U.S. Cyber Command Director General Keith B. Alexander said that the agency had thwarted "dozens" of potential terrorist attacks using surveillance such as data-mining program PRISM, and that they were going to make an effort to get more information declassified. Alexander agreed that there were concerns surrounding Edward Snowden's access to so much classified information as a low-level government contractor, and said that Snowden had overstated what he was capable of in his role with the NSA.

Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy asked Alexander for the number of terrorist attacks that the NSA has been able to foil using powers given to them by Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

Alexander said that "dozens" of plots had been prevented but couldn't name exactly how many. "It is our intent" to be able to declassify and release exact numbers, Alexander said, with the hope of releasing them next week.

Although serious doubts have been raised about whether PRISM helped catch would-be New York subway suicide bomber Najibullah Zazi, Alexander said he believed the surveillance powers of the NSA, particularly under Section 702, were "not just critical, it is the one that developed the lead on it. The one that allowed us to follow the lead."

The Associated Press reported that the government, in declassifying details of the Zazi case to show PRISM's role, had "misstated key facts of the Zazi plot." The email that led to Zazi "could easily have been intercepted without PRISM."

Alexander avoided the question of whether or not the rapid increase in government orders under Section 215 (a rise, according to Senator Richard Durbin, from 21 orders in 2009 to 212 in 2012) means that the government is pulling data other than phone records and electronic communications. The Patriot Act puts data such as medical records and other "tangible things" in the category of information that the government can seek.

Alexander also said that the NSA purges its phone records after five years of collection.

Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon asked Alexander how the decision had been made to go from making searches under "reasonable grounds" to "all phone records, all the time, at all locations?" Merkley held up his phone, which he identified as using a Verizon plan, and asked Alexander what had authorized him to seek his data.

"I think we need to get the Department of Justice and others, because it is a complex area," Alexander said.

Two senators on the committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski, tried to get the other senators to stop asking their questions during the hearing and instead save them for a closed meeting with Alexander afterward.

At the beginning of the hearing, Mikulski had specified that it would not focus on the spying program: "That's not for today," she said. Mikulski took poorly to criticism of her steering the questioning back to cyber threats, at one point calling out this reporter by name for a critical tweet.

But in spite of that, Alexander's statement for the record prepared before the hearing started included a long passage that obliquely addressed the uproar over the NSA's spying called "Guarding Privacy and Civil Liberties."

"Everything depends on trust," Alexander wrote. "We operate in a way that ensures we keep the trust of the American people because that trust is a sacred requirement. We do not see a trade-off between security and liberty. It is not a choice, and we can and must do both simultaneously."