Spoiled.
Jason Reed / Reuters
AP Photo/Charles Dharapak
Jason Reed / Reuters
AP Photo/ Evan Vucci
A web design filler text snafu.
Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's Senate campaign website "issues" page appears to have been copied directly from Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Michelle Nunn's website "ideas" page BuzzFeed has found. There's no link to the page on the site, but the section can be found by searching for Landrieu's issues page on Google. The same company, Trilogy, designed both websites.
A Landerieu campaign strategist said the page hasn't launched yet and wasn't intended to be viewed.
Via marylandrieu.com
Via michellenunn.com
Via marylandrieu.com
“I’m not going to discuss what I talk about with the president,” she said. She also dodged a question about the PolitiFact “Lie of the Year.”
Here's the exchange where Sebelius declines to answer if she offered her resignation.
Marco Caputo YouTube
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius dodged a question Friday about whether she offered her resignation during or after the bungled Obamacare rollout in October.
"I'm not going to discuss what I talk about with the president," Sebelius said, responding to a question from a reporter in Florida, as captured in video from Miami Herald reporter Marc Caputo.
Sebelius also dodged a question from Caputo about the fact-checking website Politifact awarding "Lie of the Year" to President Obama's statement that "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it."
Sebelius twice dodged questions on the topic. First, the HHS secretary offered a long explanation of the "if you like your plan" promise, declining to answer the "lie of the year" claim, and then ignoring a follow-up question also posed by Caputo.
Even the New Jersey senator seemed excited about the new album. Tweeting from the floor isn’t allowed.
Larry Downing / Reuters
WASHINGTON — Republicans may still be able to delay President Obama's nominees, but nothing is getting in the way of Sen. Cory Booker from sharing with the world his love of Beyoncé.
Presiding over the Senate during the 2 to 4 a.m. graveyard shift Friday morning, Booker threw caution to the wind — and the chamber's rule book — and started tweeting away about Queen Bey.
Holy….what.
Here are the darkest things about it.
"There are two kinds of pain. The sort of pain that makes you strong, or useless pain. The sort of pain that's only suffering. I have no patience for useless things."
Via youtube.com
Since he is the veep now, right?
Via youtube.com
Via youtube.com
Salem Communications will now own five major conservative media properties.
Salem Communications, the Christian radio conglomerate and owners of Hotair.com, Townhall.com and recent acquisition Twitchy, will buy Eagle Publishing on Jan. 15, BuzzFeed has learned.
Eagle Publishing owns RedState, Human Events and Regnery Publishing, a publisher of conservative books. With the acquisition, Salem Communications will operate a block of five major properties in the conservative media landscape.
Eagle told employees last week that Salem would acquire the company, Politico reported, but would not confirm a deal.
Sources close to the deal tell BuzzFeed that 90% of the Eagle staff will be retained, but "virtually all" of the upper management will be let go to avoid redundancy. Sources say spirits at Eagle remain high, however, because of the high retention levels.
Tom Phillips, the current president of Eagle, has been looking for the right buyer to continue operating the ideologically conservative publications for some time, according to sources. Eagle has experienced financial troubles in recent years and recently was forced to halt print publication of Human Events after nearly 70 years of circulation.
The move marks an accelerating shift in the conservative media world, as a set of boisterous, sharp-elbowed independent digital outlets are brought under the same roof.
Salem would now operate five major properties, a significant consolidation on the right in a variety of markets — from Hot Air's well-regarded analysis, Human Events' long history, and Twitchy's social focus. The move will also put a number of high-profile conservative personalities under one roof, including RedState's Erick Erickson, Hot Air's Mary Katharine Ham, and Townhall editors Guy Benson and Katie Pavlich — all frequent contributors on Fox News.
Regnery, meanwhile, has published titles from authors like Dinesh D'Souza and Michelle Malkin, in addition to Ed Klein's The Amateur.
Townhall editor Jonathan Garthwaite recently spoke with BuzzFeed about Salem's business model of growth "through acquisition," and acknowledged the stiff competition among other D.C. outlets for page views and ad dollars. Garthwaite named The Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, Breitbart.com and Washington Free Beacon as "ideologically similar and friendly competition."
Garthwaite predicted that folding in Twitchy will boost the cumulative traffic of the overall property up to 11 million uniques a month.
Sources familiar with the properties' web traffic estimate 5 million uniques a month across all Eagle properties, meaning the cumulative web traffic bought by Salem this week place it around 16 million uniques a month.
“It’s actually a pretty clever system. Take care of the people who can vote and people who can’t vote, get rid of them as quickly as possible by not giving them care, so they can’t vote against you. That’s how it works.”
"If we have a system where the government is going to be the principal provider of health care for the country, we're done. Because then, you are dependent on the government for your life and your health...When Thatcher ran for prime minister she said — remember this, this is the Iron Lady — she said, 'The British national health care system is safe in my hands.' She wasn't going to take on health care, because she knew once you have people getting free health care from the government, you can't take it away from them. And the reason is because most people don't get sick, and so free health care is just that, free health care, until you get sick. Then, if you get sick and you don't get health care, you die and you don't vote. It's actually a pretty clever system. Take care of the people who can vote and people who can't vote, get rid of them as quickly as possible by not giving them care so they can't vote against you. That's how it works."
The ruling does not make polygamy — being married to multiple people — legal, but it does end the ban on what U.S. District Court Judge Clark Waddoups referred to as “religious cohabitation.” The case was brought by the Browns, whose story has been shared on TLC’s Sister Wives .
Meri Brown, Christine Brown, Janelle Brown, Kody Brown and Robyn Sullivan of TLC's The Sister Wives welcome baby Solomon.
Courtesy of TLC / Via tlc.com
WASHINGTON — A federal judge struck down Utah's criminal ban on cohabitation between a married individual and another person not his or her spouse, a prong in the state's law against polygamy.
The Friday ruling did not address legal polygamy — actually being married to multiple people — but only what U.S. District Court Judge Clark Waddoups referred to as "religious cohabitation."
The court struck down the provision in the state's bigamy statute that criminalized a married person from "cohabit[ing] with another person" and limited another provision in the law to cover only those who make a "claim of entry into a legal union recognized by the state as marriage" and not those who enter into a religious union with no attempt to "elicit the state's recognition of marital statua."
Waddoups has been considering the case brought by the Browns — featured on TLC's Sister Wives television show — since 2011.
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who represents the plaintiffs, wrote on Friday night, "It is a moment in which all Utahans should take pride and celebrate not in the name of polygamy but of privacy. So congratulations to the Browns and to the people of Utah on a truly momentous day."
In beginning his 91-page opinion, Waddoups noted that the case "has weighed heavily on the court for many months."
At question was a 1973 law, passed when Utah rewrote all of its criminal laws, that read: "A person is guilty of bigamy when, knowing he has a husband or wife or knowing the other person has a husband or wife, the person purports to marry another person or cohabits with another person."
After detailing the history of the treatment of polygamy in Utah, Waddoups noted that the court deferred to a prior Supreme Court case foreclosing "any potential free exercise right to the actual practice of polygamy." This case, he explained, was about "religious cohabitation" in which the participants "make no claim to having entered into legal unions by virtue of their religious cohabitation."
Although Waddoups found no fundamental right either to polygamy or such "religious cohabitation," he did find that Utah's ban on religious cohabitation would violate the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment because the point of that provision in the statute is "to infringe upon or restrict" people practicing religious cohabitation "because of their religious motivation."
In looking at privacy rights, Waddoups applied the reasoning of the Supreme Court's 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas striking down sodomy laws as unconstitutional, noting, "Consensual sexual privacy is the touchstone of the rational basis review analysis in this case, as in Lawrence."
The court found the provision here unconstitutional because Utah does not prosecute "[a]dultery, including adulterous cohabitation" but does prosecute "religious cohabitation." Of that, Waddoups wrote, "The court finds no rational basis to distinguish between the two, not least with regard to the State interest in protecting the institution of marriage …."
The other potential basis for upholding the provision was "serious concerns" about "the potential for injury and harm in closed religious polygamist communities," but Waddoups decided that "such crime can and should be prosecuted on its own independent basis under the Utah statutes specifically designated for those purposes."
As such, Waddoups concluded the religious cohabitation ban to be unconstitutional.
Similar constitutional concerns led him to conclude that the other provision in the bigamy ban — its language criminalizing "purport[ing] to marry another person" when already married — needed to be interpreted in a narrow way — only when a legal union is claimed — that would prevent it from criminalizing cohabitation-like situations.
The government asked several journalists to stay quiet — even as other media outlets — and occasionally their own — told a story they and others knew to be false or incomplete.
Handout / Reuters
WASHINGTON — For years reporters and editors at top news organizations sat on a story that disproved the official lie about retired FBI agent Robert Levinson — even as other outlets continued to report it as fact.
But as the government's strategy for bringing Levinson home floundered, the Associated Press Thursday night revealed that Levinson did not go to Iran as a private businessman as the government and his family had said, but as a CIA contractor. The report also revealed that the mission had already triggered a minor meltdown at the country's most important intelligence agency: it lead to several firings and a rewriting of the CIA's rules for "analyst."
"This is the hardest thing I've done," Matt Apuzzo, who wrote the AP story along with Adam Goldman, told BuzzFeed. "Nobody likes holding a story."
Apuzzo and Goldman, who is now at the Washington Post, won a Pulitzer Prize together last year for exposing secret New York Police Department spying on Muslims. He said he's confident that now was the right time to release the information, though it wasn't an easy call to make. They've held the story for years, responding to government arguments that the story could jeopardize Levinson's life.
"I want Bob Levinson to come home, I care very deeply about that," he said.
Other outlets including The New York Times, ABC and the Washington Post published similar stories they also were holding shortly after AP broke the news.
Barry Meier, who wrote The New York Times story, also said the fact that Levinson's life was in danger was the compelling reason not to run the story.
"My editors at the Times and I were mindful that a man's life was potentially at stake. It is a realization that make things clear," Meier said in an email.
The White House has since condemned the release of the story.
"We had a lot of conversations and that's a reflection of how seriously we took it," Apuzzo said. "These decisions are made not by me and not by Adam. These decisions are made by the best most experienced editors in our company."
As new rays of hope that progress might be made came in — a proof-of-life video, strange photographs of a wan Levinson in a Guantanamo Bay-style orange jumpsuit, signs of detente with Iran — government officials warned journalists not to reveal Levinson's CIA ties for fear it would disrupt their efforts to save him.
After years of conversations with Levinson's family, Apuzzo said he admires how they've fought to keep his name in the media and pressure both the U.S. and Iranian governments to keep looking for him.
"[Levinson's wife Christine] never signed on to be a crusader to keep her husband at the front of global American diplomacy, but she has," he said.
The family's crusade appears to have extended to misleading the journalists whose help she sought: I sat down with Levinson's daughter Sarah this summer and wrote a feature about the plight of the family since his disappearance. She spoke softly but passionately about her missing father. She also hewed closely to the official story, which I reported as fact.
How much Sarah Levinson knew at the time remains unclear, but the Times reported that the family had obtained access to Levinson's emails, which made his real assignment clear. The family declined through a spokeswoman to comment for this story.
Other organizations knew the truth, or at least as much as the family and American officials know. And the organizations withholding the story continued to cover new developments. When writing about Levinson, the AP and other outlets took care to dance around syntax and avoid saying anything they knew to be a lie by attributing it to the government or to his family.
"He was investigating cigarette smuggling in early 2007," Apuzzo and Goldman wrote, truthfully, earlier this year. Followed by "and his family has said that took him to the Iranian island of Kish, where he was last seen."
Meier applied a similar technique: "Both the family of Mr. Levinson, who will turn 64 years this week, and United States officials have said that he went to Kish Island in 2007 as a private investigator, working on a cigarette smuggling case," he wrote in March 2012.
There were also some cases where colleagues of Meier on the Times's opinion side, and of and ABC's Brian Ross, have printed false information about Levinson's reason for being in Iran.
In a Times editorial from April 2009, the paper writes he went missing "while on a business trip." Then in November 2009, another editorial makes a similar error.
ABC's Trevor Ladd wrote in March 2012 that Levinson disappeared on a "business trip" and in September 2011 Megan Chuchmach wrote the same thing.
The Times said it has known about Levinson's ties since 2007. ABC did not specify, only saying it has known for "years."
He no longer has to watch idly as his peers in news media report false information, but Apuzzo said publishing the story didn't feel like a weight was lifted, it's just what had to be done.
"I don't think I'm relieved. I believe we made the right decision," Apuzzo said. "This isn't a science. You're trying to do right by him, you're trying to do right by the public."
For Apuzzo, the story shows how the media needs to more often challenge what the government says and not be afraid to stand up to an injustice.
"We don't push back hard enough against the government. We could use, the country in general could use a more adversarial press corps especially when it comes to matters of national security," he said.
"When the American government can put a citizen in harm's way and not be straight about it with the American people for seven years, and not be straight with Congress about it straight away...that stuff can't be in the shadows," he added. "That's what the press is for."
Who took Levinson, where he is and whether he is still alive remain unknown.
Newtown, Conn., marked one year since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting Saturday.
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Saturday marked the one year anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that left 26 people dead.
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Wolf is not amused.
During a segment about the latest Iowa caucus polls, CNN's Wolf Blitzer recalled Monday early readings of the Iowa caucuses in 1992 and 1989, prompting Legal View host Ashleigh Banfield to refer to the veteran journalist as "Old Man Blitzer."
There have been rumors of Blitzer being replaced, as network president Jeff Zucker reportedly looks to make CNN more attractive to younger viewers.
“I’m gonna scream and complain because Martin Luther King is always portrayed as black,” said Neal Boortz, who was substituting for Herman Cain on his radio program Monday.
Steve King, Louie Gohmert and Michele Bachmann went to Lebanon.
Gohmert, Bachmann and King in July.
Win McNamee / Getty Images
WASHINGTON — A congressional delegation consisting of Reps. Louie Gohmert, Michele Bachmann and Steve King has arrived in Beirut, Lebanon, according to Lebanese paper The Daily Star.
The Star reports that the three arrived from Cairo on Monday and were greeted at the airport by U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon David Hale.
Gohmert, Bachmann and King are some of the biggest Tea Party names in Congress. All have been major critics of the Obama administration's Middle East policy, particularly the administration's abandoned plan to intervene in Syria and its aid to Syrian rebels, which Bachmann called a sign of the "end times."
Gohmert has made the plight of Christians in the Middle East a particular cause and met last week with Mother Agnes Mariam of the Cross, a Lebanese-born nun based in Syria, who has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of the Syrian opposition.
Spokespeople for Gohmert, Bachmann and King did not immediately return requests for comment about the trip.
The U.S. Embassy in Beirut put out a press release describing the group's activities on Monday: they "met with Minister of Justice Shakib Qortbawi, leader of the Lebanese Forces Party Samir Geagea, and representatives from faith-based NGOs."
"The visit focused on the Lebanese judicial sector and also the unique role that the Lebanese Christian community plays, in partnership with other faith communities in Lebanon, in contributing to a stable Lebanon that respects and protects the rights of all citizens," the release reads.
Hide yo kids, hide yo wife.
The vice president's residence, 1 Naval Observatory Circle.
“So don’t stand and diddle, my health care’s the shizzle. It’s full of top notch health care provizzles.”
“When we have a delegation to announce, we’ll announce it.”
Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
WASHINGTON — White House Press Secretary Jay Carney declined Monday to shed any light on why the Obama administration still hasn't announced an official American delegation to the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia next year.
"When we have a delegation to announce, we'll announce it," Carney said during the daily press briefing.
With less than two months to go until the Feb. 7 opening ceremonies in Sochi, the government of the United States has remained publicly silent on an official delegation to the Russian games, which have drawn criticism due to the host nation's relatively new anti-LGBT laws. In 2012, the Obama administration announced four months before the opening ceremonies for the Summer Games in London that Michelle Obama would lead the delegation.
Top leaders from France and Germany have announced they'll boycott the opening ceremonies, in part over objections to the anti-LGBT laws and other human rights concerns.
Last week, Carney called on Russia to "to conduct the Olympics in a way that respects the rights of all participants" but declined to provide any information on the delegation or the process for selecting it.
Outrage from New Hampshire Republicans.
“Like, whoa, people, stop.”
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
JIM WATSON/AFP / Getty Images
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
Why is political advertising for young people so terrible? When virality replaces a message.
Is there any battle in contemporary politics being waged with more indignity and less prowess than the tug-of-war for twentysomethings over Obamacare?
With the success of the Affordable Care Act hinging on the ability of the health care exchanges to attract a critical mass of young, healthy people, America's youth find themselves in the crossfire of a high-stakes, comically ill-fought partisan fight for their hearts and minds.
On one side, amateur models dressed in outdated frat boy costumes pose doing keg stands as they urge their peers to sign up for "brosurance." On the other, a strangely proportioned, nightmarish Uncle Sam sneaks into doctor's offices wielding a speculum and threatens something resembling sexual assault as the TV screen fills with dire warnings about letting the government play doctor.
The pandering has become an amusing subplot in the Obamacare wars, and a frequent target of mockery on the internet, but it's symptomatic of a broader problem that afflicts the "youth outreach" efforts that so often come out of D.C. Namely, the ambitious twentysomethings best positioned to extract cash from gullible political donors on the promise that they are "down with the kids" are, in fact, not. Often, when these Great Young Hopes of the political class realize they don't know how to connect with their generational peers, they resort to dubious social media metrics and hazy claims of "being in the conversation" as proof of success. And so political donors, PACs, and partisan operatives of a certain age keep chasing the ever-elusive youth vote with marketing stunts that the Brooks Brothers-clad young strivers who concoct them promise will "go viral."
In the Obamacare marketing war for "millennials," as the marketers know them, "virality" has become an end unto itself.
Take, for example, the "Got Insurance?" campaign launched in October by the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative. Tasked with raising awareness among the 18–35 demographic, the nonprofit set about making a series of ads designed, ostensibly, to resonate with young, single people. But the final product was ham-handed and cartoonish, featuring bros in Bermuda shorts saying things like, "Yo mom, do I got insurance?" and young women, mouths agape, exclaiming, "OMG, he's hot! Let's hope he's as easy to get as this birth control."
