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White House Won’t Pay ‘Ransom’ for Debt Limit Hike

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Photo Credit: Thinkstock

Photo Credit: Thinkstock

White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer on Sunday pressed Republican lawmakers to raise the debt ceiling without conditions, saying that the American people “should not have to pay Congress ransom.”

But Pfeiffer sidestepped questions about whether Obama would veto a bill that did not offer a clean debt hike.

“Our position on this is the same as it was in October and the same as it has been for more than a year,” said Pfeiffer on “Fox News Sunday.” The American people should not have to pay their members of Congress ransom for doing their most basic function which is paying the bills.”

A GOP effort to defund Obamacare led to a 16-day federal government shutdown in October and brought the U.S. to within hours of defaulting on its debt.

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Senate State Dept. Retaliated Against Benghazi Witnesses

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

The White House, Pentagon and especially the Department of State are actively frustrating the Senate’s investigation into the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack, according to the Senate’s recently released 88-page report.

In a particularly stinging accusation that went largely unreported by news media, the Senate’s extensive report by its Benghazi investigative committee charged a “strong case can be made that State engaged in retaliation against witnesses who were willing to speak with Congress.”

“No reasonable explanation accounts for the State Department’s unacceptable treatment of these witnesses,” read the report.

The lawmakers also accused the State Department of returning some witnesses to active duty so they were “shielded from, or actively avoided, Committee requests for interviews.”

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White House Drug Czar Contradicts Obama on Impact of Marijuana Use

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Photo Credit: Washington Times

Photo Credit: AP

President Obama’s latest claims about marijuana are contradicted by research and official positions of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which is part of the White House. And Mr. Obama’s words have anti-drug leaders worried about negative repercussions among youth.

Mr. Obama claimed to The New Yorker magazine that marijuana is no worse than cigarettes or alcohol and he promoted state efforts by Colorado and Washington to legalize marijuana, which remains illegal under federal law.

The National Drug Control Policy’s official stance, posted on the whitehouse.gov website, says the opposite of Mr. Obama on all counts.

For example, as documented in agency reports, marijuana smoke has significantly more carcinogens than tobacco smoke.

And as reported by the government’s National Institute on Drug Abuse, adolescent use of marijuana does something that alcohol does not; it causes permanent brain damage, including lowering of I.Q.

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CNN: Former White House Official Admitted Obama Not Good at Governing (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Photo Credit: YouTube

President Barack Obama may be adept at campaigning but not at governing, a former White House official told CNN.

CNN reporter Peter Hamby recounted a recent conversation with the Democratic official and quoted him as saying, “He’s really good at campaigning. Maybe not governing.”

“I talked to a former Obama White House person, just before Christmas, when Obama was sort of adrift, figuring out what to do, his poll numbers were pretty low…

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White House: Obama Won’t Insist on Jobless Aid in Budget Deal

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

The White House will not insist that an emerging budget deal include an extension of the unemployment benefits program set to expire at the end of the year, press secretary Jay Carney said on Friday.

Carney said that it would be “terrible to tell more than a million families across the country just a few days after Christmas that they’re out of benefits,” but that the White House was agnostic on how the extension happened.

“The vehicle that they use to do that is less important than the fact that they do it,” Carney said.

The statement from Carney echoed House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who said Thursday that an extension of the jobless benefits did not have to be included in a budget deal to win Democratic support.

“Hopefully, it could be part of the budget, but it doesn’t have to be part of the budget,” Pelosi said. “It could be on its own vehicle, as it goes forward, but it’s something we must consider.”

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White House Email Chain Shows Launch Fears

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Photo Credit: ReutersTop White House and health officials feared that HealthCare.gov would not work correctly and would set off a wave of bad publicity, according to emails shortly before the disastrous rollout of the Obamacare enrollment website.

The emails, released Wednesday evening by House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa, included a picture of an error message that has become emblematic of the launch debacle. They were dated Sept. 25 — less than a week before the enrollment portal opened and immediately created a crisis for the White House.

A White House spokesman said the emails — which use technical terms — focused on problems that could arise if there was high traffic to the site, not to a fear that the site wouldn’t work at all.

In the emails Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Deputy Chief Information Officer Henry Chao summed up concerns that he said White House Chief Technology Officer Todd Park had expressed.

“When Todd Park and Marilyn [Tavenner] was here yesterday one of the things Todd conveyed was this fear the WH has about hc.gov being unavailable,” Chao said, referring to CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner.

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Crowd Declares ‘2nd Revolution’ Outside White House

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Photo Credit: WND Former Reagan Justice Department lawyer Larry Klayman hopes the 19th of November will rank with the 4th of July, someday.

He called the day the beginning of “The Second American Revolution.”

Klayman organized a rally Tuesday at Lafayette Park, across from the White House, by the “The Reclaim America Now” coalition.

That coalition is composed of about three-dozen conservative groups, including 2 Million Bikers to D.C., Jihad Watch, Freedom Watch, Gun Owners of America, Accuracy in Media, Tea Party Patriots and the Western Center for Journalism.

About 200 hardy patriots concerned about the direction of the country gathered on a sunny but chilly day to hear speakers call for two goals: The renewal of America and the resignation of President Obama.

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White House Now Denying Top Democrat’s Claim About ‘I Cannot Even Stand to Look at You’ Obama Moment

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesBy Fred Lucas.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the charge from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) that an unidentified Republican House leader told President Barack Obama, “I cannot even stand to look at you” during government shutdown negotiations is not accurate — but Durbin is standing by his story.

A reporter Wednesday referred to Durbin’s claim on Facebook that a member of Congress told the president to his face that he couldn’t stand to look at him.

Carney, clearly prepared for the question, gave a direct answer.

“I looked into this and spoke with someone who was in that meeting and it did not happen,” Carney said.

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Durbin: House leader told Obama ‘I cannot even stand to look at you’

By Justin Sink.

A top Senate Democrat said that a leading House Republican told President Obama that they could not ‘even stand to look at you’ during negotiations over the government shutdown.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said in a Facebook post that the alleged confrontation happened during a meeting between Republicans and the president.

“Many Republicans searching for something to say in defense of the disastrous shutdown strategy will say President Obama just doesn’t try hard enough to communicate with Republicans,” Durbin said. “But in a ‘negotiation’ meeting with the president, one GOP House Leader told the president: ‘I cannot even stand to look at you.'”

“What are the chances of an honest conversation with someone who has just said something so disrespectful?” the Illinois Democrat added.

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White House Staffer Fired for Tweeting Under Fake Name

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Photo Credit: west.mA White House national security official was fired last week after being caught as the mystery Tweeter who has been tormenting the foreign policy community with insulting comments and revealing internal Obama administration information for over two years.

Jofi Joseph, a director in the non-proliferation section of the National Security Staff at the White House, has been surreptitiously tweeting under the moniker @natsecwonk, a Twitter feed famous inside Washington policy circles since it began in February, 2011 until it was shut down last week. Two administration officials confirmed that the mystery tweeter was Joseph, who has also worked at the State Department and on Capitol Hill for Senators Bob Casey (D-PA) and Joe Biden. Until recently, he was part of the administration’s team working on negotiations with Iran.

During his time tweeting under the @natsecwonk name, Joseph openly criticized the policies of his White House bosses and often insulted their intellect and appearance. At different times, he insulted or criticized several top White House and State Department officials, including former National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, Secretary of State John Kerry, and many many others.

The Daily Beast saved a long record of @natsecwonk’s tweets prior to the shutting down of his Twitter feed.

“I’m a fan of Obama, but his continuing reliance and dependence upon a vacuous cipher like Valerie Jarrett concerns me,” he once tweeted.

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Video: Carney Won’t Answer Question About Benghazi Witness Intimidation

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White House Press Secretary Jay Carney wouldn’t answer Fox News correspondent Ed Henry’s question Thursday about reports on the CIA being on the ground the night of the Benghazi attack and whether operatives with information about it were being silenced by agency higher-ups.

Carney dodged, referring Henry to the CIA and claiming the agency had provided “an extraordinary amount of information” related to the attack. He also said he was not aware of any CIA employees who experienced retaliation, although a CNN report last week said there was an “unprecedented” effort by the agency to keep its Benghazi secrets from ever leaking out:

HENRY: Last one. Last week CNN reported that dozens of people were working for the CIA around Benghazi on the night of the attack, and they are claiming that some of these CIA operatives now feel like they’re being intimidated, that they’re getting polygraph tests sometimes on a monthly basis, which is much more frequent than CIA officials apparently normally get, because the government is trying to figure out whether or not they’re talking to the media, they’re talking to Congress about what happened that night. Can you assure the American people that’s not happening, and can you shed any light on what the CIA was doing? I realize there may be classified information there, but in general, is there anything you can say about what the CIA was doing there?

CARNEY: I don’t have any information on CIA individuals or operations in — around the world. I would refer you to the CIA on that. I would also refer you to the very clear statement in response to that put out by the CIA, which says the CIA has worked closely with its oversight committees to provide them with an extraordinary amount of information related to the attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi. Furthermore, CIA leadership has informed officers who may want to speak with the oversight committees on this matter that it will support and facilitate such contact. CIA employees are always free to speak to Congress if they want to, and there is an established process to facilitate such communication on a confidential basis…

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