Yes we can….spam your inbox.

From the Times piece:

Responding to these concerns, several Democrats said Friday that Organizing for Action would cut back its fund-raising activities so the group would not be in competition with the candidates for donors. Katie Hogan, a spokeswoman for it, said, "We understand and expect that some of our more than 420,000 contributors will shift their focus to their local campaigns during the midterm season."

But OFA definitely has not cut back their email fundraising effort. The past week has seen 14 emails from OFA that included a link to donate to the group.

(Two of the above emails — "Forward this" and "We're giving this sticker away - want one?" — do not include donate links.)

Organizing for Action Emails/Andrew Kaczynski's Inbox

"As OFA has been fighting for the last year we will continue to tell the success stories of ACA and fight on issues that the american people want to see action on like raising the minimum wage. We understand that some of our more than 420,000 contributors that give an average contribution of under $40 will shift their focus to their local campaigns during the midterm season. OFA does not work on electoral politics, and will still be engaged on the issues through our more than 4.4 million action takers across the country."

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is doing a media blitz of local news channels for Obamacare’s sign-up deadline Monday.

"What we know from insurance companies...tell us for their initial customers it's somewhere between 80, 85, some say as high as 90 percent have paid so far," Sebelius told KWTV during an Obamacare media blitz Monday.

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A camel staring at the eye of a needle would decorate a new American embassy — in a country where the average income yearly is $1,250.

"Camel Contemplating Needle" by John Baldessari on display at the HALL Wines winery in Napa Valley, Calif. An identical sculpture is planned for the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan.

Photograph by Michael Bowles courtesy of Hall Wines / Via hallwines.com

The State Department is planning to spend $400,000 in taxpayer funds to buy a sculpture for the new American embassy being built in Islamabad, Pakistan, according to contracting records.

The work, by noted American artist John Baldessari, depicts a life-size white camel made of fiberglass staring in puzzlement at the eye of an oversize shiny needle — a not-so-subtle play on the New Testament phrase about the difficulty the wealthy have in entering the kingdom of heaven.

Officials explained the decision to purchase the piece of art, titled "Camel Contemplating Needle," in a four-page document justifying a "sole source" procurement. "This artist's product is uniquely qualified," the document explains. "Public art which will be presented in the new embassy should reflect the values of a predominantly Islamist country," it says. (Like the Bible, the Qur'an uses the metaphor of a camel passing through the eye of a needle.)

To emphasize Baldassari's fame, the contracting officials pulled a section from Wikipedia. "John Anthony Baldessari (born June 17, 1931) is an American conceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography and appropriated images."

In a statement, State Department press spokeswoman Christine Foushee said the proposed purchase comes from the department's "Office of Art in Embassies." In new construction projects, she said, a small part of the total funds, about 0.5%, is spent on art purchases.

Steven Beyer of Beyer Projects, the art dealer for the project, said the government reached out. "They approached us," he said in a phone interview. "We were, of course, quite surprised."

The $400,000 price tag "is actually a very a reduced price for this sculpture," he said. "There is an art market that makes these prices, and this is one of the most prominent American artists."

Another copy of "Camel Contemplating a Needle" is on display at Hall Wines in Napa Valley, Calif., and Beyer said that copy sold for far more then the State Department would pay.

He points out that while some Americans may find it frivolous for the government to pay for art, others will find it important. "It depends on what part of the public you are in," he said. "If you go to the museum and enjoy art and are moved by it, things cost what they cost."

To put the sculpture's price tag into a local perspective, the average yearly income in impoverished Pakistan is about $1,250 per year, according to the Agency for International Development.

Contracting document for camel sculpture:

Click to view the full PDF.

In a 2010 meeting in the Oval Office, the president told service chiefs they could “go do other things” if they didn’t support abolishing DADT.

File: August 2010 / Pool / Getty Images

In a meeting with the heads of the five service branches in 2010, President Obama offered the leaders a choice: Support my efforts to end the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, or resign.

In a video obtained by BuzzFeed via a Freedom of Information Act request, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Robert Papp revealed that Obama was unwilling to compromise with service leaders over DADT during a meeting in 2010. "We were called into the Oval Office and President Obama looked all five service chiefs in the eye and said, 'This is what I want to do.' I cannot divulge everything he said to us, that's private communications within the Oval Office, but if we didn't agree with it — if any of us didn't agree with it — we all had the opportunity to resign our commissions and go do other things," he said.

Papp talked about the meeting during a Q&A session with U.S. Coast Guard Academy cadets following a leadership address to the corps on Jan 8. The admiral was asked how officers should respond to policies that they disagreed with but were required to enforce. "If I disagree morally with [a policy], it's my obligation to voice that, regardless of the risk it might give my career," he said. "I've been in those situations. I've been fortunate to have good leaders that have appreciated that." Using himself as an example, Papp said it was OK for leaders to "not be thrilled" with a certain regulation, but if they didn't "see anything terribly wrong with it," it was their job as officers to support and enforce it.

The admiral, who will be retiring from active duty on May 30, added that he thought the U.S. military made the right decision by abolishing DADT.

In a 2008 interview, then-Senator Obama told The Advocate that he wouldn't make support of DADt's repeal "a litmus test" for his military leaders. "What I want are members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who are making decisions based on what strengthens our military and what is going to make us safer, not ideology."

Admiral Papp discusses DADT at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn.:

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BuzzFeed has reached out to the White House for comment on this.

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A top White House official ventured to the Maryland offices of QSSI to share some bubbly as Obamacare enrollment hit a big milestone.

Mike Segar / Reuters / Reuters

WASHINGTON — Early Tuesday morning, a top White House official ventured to Maryland to drink champagne with some techies in a parking lot.

According to audio obtained by American Urban Radio Networks White House correspondent April Ryan, White House Chief Technology Officer Todd Park traveled to the headquarters of QSSI, the Maryland-based contractor hired by the administration to fix Obamacare's troubled website, to celebrate as enrollment hit 7 million.

The festivities took place in the building's parking lot because employees "are not allowed to drink alcohol in the offices at QSSI," Ryan reported.

Park, a former tech executive, helped lead the White House effort to repair HealthCare.gov after its stalled rollout. Ryan reported earlier Tuesday that Obamacare achieved 7 million signups around midnight Monday, just as the official enrollment window was coming to a close. Officials would not confirm that number.

A source familiar with the figures pointed to an Associated Press report that enrollment was "on track" to surpass 7 million.

In the Maryland parking lot early Tuesday morning, 7 million was a cause for celebration.

"There was a number that was set out by the Congressional Budget Office as a goal," Park told the QSSI staff. "For the health care marketplace it was 7 million ... Everyone thought that was impossible, especially after the rocky start. And I am proud to tell you all, and you're the first to know ... that y'all have carried the ball over the impossible line. You actually exceeded the 7 million enrollees."

Listen to the audio here.

Digging deep into the 1980s! When a Koch brother called Social Security a pyramid scheme.

A New Beginning by 1980 Libertarian presidential nominee Ed Clark. David Koch ran as vice president and funded the campaign.

amazon.com

WASHINGTON — In 1980, David Koch ran in and funded a presidential campaign that called Social Security "The Ultimate Pyramid Scheme" and promised to abolish and replace it.

In 2014, Democrats are hoping to use that fact to tar the Republicans he and his brother Charles are bankrolling in 2014. Welcome to the next phase of the Democrats' anti-Koch strategy this year: Treat the Kochs like a candidate for office and try to make Republicans answer for the Kochs' libertarian ideology.

Democrats have already painted the Kochs as a shadowy pair pouring millions into the political process for their own ends. In recent months Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has made almost a daily point of invoking their names, calling them "moles" Tuesday, for instance. In North Carolina, supporters of Democratic incumbent Sen. Kay Hagan — a top target for Koch largesse — say Republicans benefitting from Koch spending need to say whether or not they agree with statements like the one about Social Security in 1980.

David Koch didn't actually write the book that called for the abolition of Social Security, but he was the main driver of the presidential campaign that pushed for it in 1980. Koch ran as vice president on the Libertarian ticket helmed by Ed Clark, but according to a 1980 New York magazine report on the race was selected by Libertarian party leaders as VP candidate before Clark was selected to run for president, mostly because of his ability to give their campaign effort more money than it had ever seen before.

"They liked me, I guess," Koch told New York. "But obviously, my ability to give unrestricted funds was a major consideration."

In the end, Koch spent more than $2 million on campaign. Enough, Hagan supporters say, to make him responsible for the campaign's message.

And so, using a copy of Clark's 1980 campaign book A New Beginning as a jump-off point, Hagan's supporters are beginning to vet Koch as a candidate for office, shopping around the kind of opposition research campaigns usually send out on their opponents, not the people running ad campaigns.

The book explicitly calls for the abolition of Social Security as well as calling it a pyramid scheme.

"The injustice of Social Security cries out for reform. Neither the individual worker nor the economy as a whole can it much longer," reads the text. "The system is collapsing under its own weight and it is bringing us all down with it. We must start removing it from our backs."

The book calls for replacing Social Security with "a new system based on voluntary, cooperative, decentralized market institutions instead of the current centralized and bureaucratic system." Younger workers would see the government stop collecting Social Security taxes "and allowing them to invest that amount in private plans."

Democrats hope voters will be skittish over Koch's 1980 support for the abolition of Social Security when considering the candidates he's supporting in North Carolina. For team Hagan, that means Thom Tillis, Republican speaker of the state House. Tillis will face several other Republicans in the Senate primary in May.

"David Koch put $2 million of his own money into running for vice president on a platform that explicitly advocated dismantling Social Security and has a long record of threatening to break the promise we've made our seniors," said Ben Ray, communications director for the coordinated Democratic campaign in North Carolina. "Now the Kochs are spending many times that on Thom Tillis. It's up to Tillis to answer for their dangerous views."

The Social Security chapter from A New Beginning:

Averaging 2.5-stars. An odd Facebook feature!

On the ballot Tuesday, Washington, D.C., Mayor Vincent Gray just voted for his reelection. On his Facebook page, D.C. residents can also rate Gray's performance — and people do. Based on 109 ratings, the mayor is pulling down two-and-a-half stars. People also have some thoughts on how a variety of things are going.

Some did not like that he vetoed a living wage bill last year.

Via Facebook: MayorGray

Via Facebook: MayorGray

Via Facebook: MayorGray

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Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who chairs the Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, fired off a letter to John Kerry requesting more documents relating to the purchase.

"Camel Contemplating Needle" by John Baldessari on display at the HALL Wines winery in Napa Valley, Calif. An identical sculpture is planned for the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan.

Photograph by Michael Bowles courtesy of Hall Wines / Via hallwines.com

WASHINGTON — A top Republican on the House Oversight committee is asking that the State Department explain the planned purchase of a $400,000 sculpture of a camel to be installed at the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan.

As BuzzFeed reported Monday, the department was planning to purchase the sculpture by artist John Baldessari, titled "Camel Contemplating Needle," which depicts a life-size camel staring into the eye of a needle. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who chairs the Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry Tuesday, asking for further justification for the purchase.

Chaffetz calls the purchase "a questionable use of taxpayer resources," and notes that the sculpture was "purchased via a 'sole source' contract without open competition because '[t]his artist's product is uniquely qualified' and his work 'will meet the unique artistic criteria which has been established for this project.'"

According the Chaffetz, "The department's justification for using a sole source contract appears to be deficient." The Utah Republican requested that the State Department send over any and all documents relating not just to the purchase of the camel sculpture but all embassy purchases of art since 2010. He references a $1 million contract for a sculpture in the U.S. Embassy in London.

"The American people have a right to know that their tax dollars are being spent responsibly, especially for art that the vast majority of U.S. citizens will never have the opportunity to view," he wrote.

State Department spokeswoman Christine Foushee previously told BuzzFeed the proposed purchase comes from the department's "Office of Art in Embassies," and new construction projects only spend about 0.5% on art purchases.

Read the Chaffetz letter below:

HARD HAT = WORKING.

All these folks make up what is commonly known as "Congress."

They like to show up to work in pant suits and power suits.

AP

Facebook: HarryReid

Facebook: HarryReid

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Media buys, death panels, Armageddon. The president announces the administration hit 7.1 million sign-ups in Obamacare.

Announcing the administration surpassed 7 million enrollees in Obamacare, President Obama said the White House didn't make a hard sell on Obamacare. "We didn't make a hard sell: We didn't have billions of dollars of commercials like some critics did."

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From January until the end of March, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs the HealthCare.gov site and administers the Affordable Care Act, will have spent $52 million on paid media, officials said.

Via nytimes.com

Obama also lampooned critics of the law at the announcement Tuesday. "Many of the tall tales that have been told about this law have been debunked. There are still no death panels. Armageddon has not arrived," he said.

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The Mississippi bill is the first of many varying “religious freedom” bills introduced in several states this year to advance to a governor since a more expansive bill was vetoed by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer in February.

Mississippi House Judiciary Committee B chairman Andy Gipson explains the religious freedom bill before the state's House on March 12.

AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis

After simultaneous debate in both chambers of the Mississippi Legislature Tuesday, state lawmakers approved a religious freedom bill that some have argued could lead to discrimination against LGBT people and others.

First in the House, the bill passed 79-43, and later, Senate lawmakers approved the bill with a wide majority. Gov. Phil Bryant is expected to sign the bill into law.

As it is written, Senate Bill 2681 — or the Mississippi Religious Freedom Restoration Act — largely mirrors the 1993 federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act and other bills passed in 18 states that mirror the federal law, except for language that prevents employees of private businesses from raising legal claims against those employees under the bill. Proponent lawmakers say the bill will protect state citizens' free exercise of religion from government intrusion, while some lawmakers in both chambers questioned whether it would have unintended consequences — including permitting discrimination.

Several lawmakers questioned the bill's sponsoring lawmakers in both chambers.

After repeated questions by his colleagues about possible consequences of the bill and what exactly it intends to do, Rep. Joey Hood, sounding frustrated, said, "What we're trying to do, gentlemen, is just protect the religious freedom of Mississippians."

During the Senate debate, Sen. Derrick Simmons, a Democrat who has been outspoken in his opposition to the legislation, urged his colleagues to vote no, saying, "I urge you not to legalize discrimination in the State of Mississippi."

"I believe certainly by the way that this bill is drafted that it will allow discrimination in Mississippi," Simmons said. "There is nothing in the proposed legislation that prohibits that."

In a somewhat heated exchange, Sen. Gary Jackson asked Simmons to point to a section of the bill that would open the door to discrimination. Simmons said he couldn't, but repeated that there's no language in the bill that would prohibit discrimination.

Another democratic senator, David Blount, said, "There are potentially huge economic effects to passing this bill and the reputation of Mississippi in this country," likely referring to the firestorm of opposition that arose over "religious freedom" legislation vetoed by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer Feb. 26.

But later in the debate, Sen. Phillip Gandy, the principal author of the bill, said the bill has none of the language found in the Arizona bill, and further unlike Arizona, the bill isn't opposed by big business groups in the state. "The Mississippi Economic Council has no problem with this bill, the business community," Gandy said. The MEC previously opposed the bill before recent revisions to its language.

Since the Mississippi bill was introduced in January, LGBT and civil rights activists have loudly expressed concerns the law could lead to people discriminating against others based on their religious beliefs.

"Senate Bill 2681 would promote discrimination against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals and families in Mississippi," the Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, executive director of the Campaign for Southern Equality, said in a statement Tuesday morning. "As a minister, it's clear that this extreme bill is about legalizing discrimination, not protecting religious freedom. Furthermore the broad implications of this bill could result in discrimination aimed toward many communities."

The approved bill, the latest of a series of versions over the last three months, emerged from a small committee of House and Senate lawmakers just minutes before a Monday night deadline, surprising some who thought it was stalled for this session.

Just last month, the House approved a drastically amended version of the bill that removed most of its language and simply called for a study committee on how to proceed with the matter. The Senate, however, rejected the amended version and instead moved for the two chambers to conference on the bill. That conference committee drafted the latest version.

"Even though the Mississippi legislature removed some of the egregious language from Arizona's infamous SB 1062, we are disappointed that it passed this unnecessary law and ignored the national, public outcry against laws of this nature," said Eunice Rho, advocacy and policy counsel with the ACLU.

In addition to provisions for religious protections, the bill calls for the addition of "In God We Trust" to the state's seal, a change personally proposed by Gov. Bryant.

Pending Bryant's signature, the law takes effect July 1, according to the bill's language.

Messages were left at Bryant's office seeking comment and exact plans for the bill.

Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine tells BuzzFeed some lawmakers are meeting informally over altering the AUMF.

Al-Qaeda fighters celebrate on vehicles taken from Iraqi security forces, on a main street in Fallujah, west of Baghdad on March 30.

Stringer/Iraq / Reuters

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of senators has quietly begun discussing a push to repeal or rewrite the broad law granting the president sweeping powers to wage war against individuals and groups across the globe.

Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine told BuzzFeed that several lawmakers have held informal conversations on possible changes to the 9/11-era rules of war on terrorism, known as the Authorization for the Use of Military Force.

"It's something [Congress] needs to discuss," the Virginia Democrat said. Although Kaine said there's "there's no firm timeline" with only a few months left before Congress kicks into full campaign mode, changes to the law would likely have to happen before the end of July.

Whether that can actually happen, though, remains unclear.

"I'm very much in support of it, as you know we have a bipartisan bill, but I think the calendar is getting crowded," Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden warned.

Passed in the days immediately after the 9/11 attacks, the authorization law gave military and intelligence agencies wide leeway to pursue individuals and organizations with suspected ties to al-Qaeda.

The law provided the legal groundwork for the administration's aggressive counterterrorism strategy, from armed drone strikes to "kill/capture" missions, raids similar to the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011.

One option that Senate supporters of repealing or dramatically replacing the law have considered is a push to include language in the Pentagon's fiscal year 2015 defense budget bill. That measure is a must-pass bill and will likely begin working its way through the Senate this spring. But Kaine cautioned, "We are not there yet," and that other options — like a standalone bill — remain on the table.

Regardless of the strategy, however, changes to the law face an uphill battle.

Asked if he thought there was a chance Congress would take action to reform or eliminate the AUMF, Republican hawk Sen. Lindsey Graham quipped, "Good luck … no, not really."

But Graham said he's not personally opposed to either the debate or to modifying the law, but only so long as it provides flexibility to conduct the war on terrorism.

"This is a really good question. If you think we are at war, then who with … I think we're at war with a radical Islam that morphs itself into many forms through many regions," he said.

"That's the AUMF for me," he continued. "The ability to use lethal force to obtain under the law of war those persons reasonably associated with this movement. And I think you need to redefine the movement. Because al-Qaeda has splintered … you call it what you like, it's still just as lethal."

The desire to continue and even expand the AUMF is weighing on the minds on the lawmakers who want to change the law — they worry efforts to repeal or replace could be hijacked.

Sen. Rand Paul, a leading critic of the AUMF, emphasized his desire narrow the law. He worries that efforts to change parts of the AUMF could result in new powers granted. "I'm afraid if they revisit it, there are a lot of forces that want to expand the AUMF, so I'm concerned about expanding it," he said.

"I think we should deauthorize the war," he said. "I think that if we don't take the power back, it could be used at any point in time."

Although the administration has sent signals it could be open to changes, Graham and others said it's unlikely any modifications to the AUMF will happen anytime soon.

"I think we've just debated it more than the Congress will, because everybody's afraid of it," Graham said.

LINK: 60 Words And A War Without End: The Untold Story Of The Most Dangerous Sentence In U.S. History

Hell of a hat tip.

On Wednesday night CNN broke the news about a magnitude 8.2 earthquake in Chile — and aired a video called "TSUNAMI EN ANTOFAGASTA!!!" shot by citizen journalist AntofagastaNEWZ. The YouTube video featured a television airing CNNChile coverage of the earthquake.

Props to CNN for giving props to AntofagastaNEWZ for taping CNNChile's report about the earthquake and tsunami warnings as they were actually happening.

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Here's the original:

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A long-awaited decision comes down in a 5-4 split along ideological grounds.

The exterior of the U.S. Supreme Court is seen in Washington on March 5.

Gary Cameron / Reuters / Reuters

WASHINGTON — Federal limits on the overall amount political donors can give to all federal candidates and committee, called aggregate limits, are unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

The five more conservative members of the court found the aggregate limits challenged by Shaun McCutcheon to be unconstitutional, while the four more liberal members would have upheld them.

In an opinion for four members of the court, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote:

This case does not involve any challenge to the base limits, which we have previously upheld as serving the permissible objective of combatting corruption. The Government contends that the aggregate limits also serve that objective, by preventing circumvention of the base limits. We conclude, however, that the aggregate limits do little, if anything, to address that concern, while seriously restricting participation in the democratic process. The aggregate limits are therefore invalid under the First Amendment.

Justice Clarence Thomas would have gone further than Roberts, reversing the longstanding Supreme Court opinion allowing for regulation of campaign contributions, writing that the 1976 ruling in Buckley v. Valeo "denigrates core First Amendment speech and should be overruled."

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the dissenting justices, decrying the decision as "creat[ing] a loophole that will allow a single individual to contribute millions of dollars to a political party or to a candidate's campaign."

He continued: "Taken together with Citizens United v. Federal Election Comm'n, today's decision eviscerates our Nation's campaign finance laws, leaving a remnant incapable of dealing with the grave problems of democratic legitimacy that those laws were intended to resolve."

In making his argument, however, Roberts — writing for himself and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, and Samuel Alito — based his opinion in a robust defense of the First Amendment, writing, "Money in politics may at times seem repugnant to some, but so too does much of what the First Amendment vigorously protects. If the First Amendment protects flag burning, funeral protests, and Nazi parades—despite the profound offense such spectacles cause—it surely protects political campaign speech despite popular opposition."

The aggregate limits at issue in the case allow a donor to contribute a total of $48,600 to federal candidates and a total of $74,600 to other political committees, for a total of up to $123,200 to candidate and committees, in a given two-year election cycle.

The chief justice turned aside interest in "debating whether the line that Buckley drew between contributions and expenditures should remain the law." Among those arguing for the court to revisit that issue was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose lawyer argued in the case for the end to such a distinction.

"Notwithstanding the robust debate," Roberts wrote, "we see no need in this case to revisit Buckley's distinction between contributions and expenditures and the corollary distinction in the applicable standards of review.

Roberts wrote that the court had no need to do so because the aggregate limits failed even to meet the lower test the court had devised for deciding whether contribution limits were allowed. Because that standard requires the government show the limits are aimed at stopping "quid pro quo corruption," Roberts wrote, the aggregate limits are not constitutional because they "are not directed specifically to candidate behavior."

“There is a sense among the Ugandan political class that these are petty threats,” said one Ugandan human rights activist. A U.S. team is headed to the country to review aid.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni

WPA pool / Via Getty Images

KAMPALA, Uganda — Facing criticism over the U.S. response to Uganda's harsh new anti-gay law, the Obama administration has sent a team from several agencies to review aid to Uganda.

That team includes representatives from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters, USAID, and the State Department's Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator, according to sources who participated in discussions in the Ugandan capital.

Administration officials have said that the administration has been "reviewing" aid since the enactment of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, which imposes up to a life-time prison sentence for homosexuality, but has only specified a handful of concrete steps since the law was passed over a month ago.

One of the discussions' attendees, Kikonyongo Kivumbi, said he welcomed comments during the meeting from Ambassador Scott DeLisi, who said that "values form the DNA of the American-Uganda relationship."

But Kivumbi, the executive director of the Uganda Health and Science Press Association, suggested that U.S. actions since the Anti-Homosexuality Act became law haven't sent that message clearly.

On the same night the United States announced four actions last week on the anti-gay law, U.S. officials also announced an enhanced military mission to hunt for warlord Joseph Kony. That military mission, which boosts support for the Ugandan military, muted the severity of U.S. actions in response to the law, Kivumbi argued.

"It was not the right time. It appeared like they were giving in" to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, Kivumbi said. "There is a sense among the Ugandan political class that these are petty threats" coming from the Americans.

One of the steps the Obama administration took was to cancel a Center for Disease Control study that was to be conducted with a Ugandan university, examining high-risk populations, specifically men who have sex with other men (a group known as MSMs in public health lingo). Kivumbi also said that actually sent exactly the wrong message. The move, he said, implied that Ugandan officials could have veto power over U.S.-funded HIV interventions as they implement the anti-gay law.

The U.S. government "cannot put on hold MSM support programs [in Uganda] under the pretext that they are waiting for guidelines from government on how the act is going to implemented," he said. He said he felt like this was a throwback to a fight Ugandan activists had to get the U.S. to invest in interventions with MSMs in the first place, which he said were resisted because of bilateral agreements about how the program would operate.

"They are still stuck to observing bilateral agreements with the host countries even if those host countries are in direct violation with nondiscrimination and a number of American values like human rights," he said.

National Security Council spokesman Jonathan Lalley said the study was suspended because "it could pose a danger to respondents and staff."

But Julie Dorf of the Council for Global Equality, which advocates for LGBT rights in foreign policy, echoed Kivumbi's sentiment.

The U.S. "message has been confusing and their actions have been insufficient," she said, noting that a U.S. Embassy statement issued Friday that said there had been "no change in U.S. assistance to Uganda" undercut the impact of the adjustments that had been announced the week earlier.

At stake is a more fundamental question than just the U.S. commitment to LGBT rights in Uganda, Dorf said. "I think what the U.S. government is not taking seriously enough is much bigger than the Anti-Homosexuality Act, is the extent of corruption and the way our actions are supporting a dictator. It's missing an overall human rights policy."

The Obama administration insisted that the mission to get Kony and support human rights in Uganda were not "mutually exclusive."

"We will take additional steps to demonstrate our opposition to the Act and our support for LGBT persons in Uganda," Lalley, the NSC spokesman, said.

"We know there are many people who share our concerns about Ugandan President Museveni's recent enactment of the Anti-Homosexuality Act. Ensuring justice and accountability for human rights violators like the LRA and protecting LGBT rights aren't mutually exclusive. We can and must do both," he added.

Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Africa, told BuzzFeed that while he was very supportive of the mission to get Kony, that work "cannot prevent our also holding the Museveni administration responsible" for the anti-gay law and said he "expected and hoped" more would be done to do so.

"I think there has to be action beyond what has so far been announced in order to send that message clearly not just to Museveni," Coons said, "but to other countries around the world that may otherwise be tempted to think that a strategic partnership will also blind us to the importance of also being aligned on values or holding accountable our allies where we have fundamental differences in values such as this."

Former acting CIA director Michael Morell said the process to produce the infamous Benghazi talking points and the taking points themselves “could have been better.”

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Health.

Presidential "Between Two Ferns" interview.

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A Freedom of Information Act request for everyone else’s Freedom of Information Act requests show people were looking for some strange things in the second quarter of 2013.

"Any document containing the word 'mindcontrol' dating back to 1 Jan. 2000"

NSA FOIA Request

"Everything you've got"

NSA FOIA Request

"Materials on molecular ozone devices that are engineered by NSA Freemasons"

NSA FOIA Request

"Records relating to NSA's mind reading programs"

NSA FOIA Request

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“I need all the electricity votes.”

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The whole world is waiting for a Vine of Sean Hannity downing a beer in one take.

Fox News host Sean Hannity is spending the whole week investigating the wild spring break scene of "boobs, twerking, liquor, and weed" by using plenty of bikini clad B-roll and video of wasted kids at the beach talking to reporters. Here's a good example:

During Monday night's report, Hannity seemed to be bothered by the youngsters use of beer bongs to get alcohol in their systems as fast as possible, offering an old school option from his NYU years instead:

"All right, go to the funnel for example. It used to be when we were younger, you do a shotgun. You put a hole in the bottom of a beer can, put it up here, and open it."

Watch the whole amazing clip below:

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