Photograph by STR/AFP via Getty Images

A vehicle and the surround buildings burn after they were set on fire inside the U.S. consulate compound in Benghazi late on September 11, 2012.

President Barack Obama, addressing a live television audience from the White House, said the commissioner in charge of the IRS has been removed following the agency’s targeted scrutiny of conservative groups.

“The misconduct uncovered is inexcuseable,” Obama said in a brief statement delivered from the East Room. “Americans have a right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it. I will not tolerate this kind of behavior at any agency, especially the IRS.”

“We’re going to hold the responsible parties accountable,” he said, announcing that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew had accepted the resignation of the acting IRS commissioner, Steven Miller.

The president said “new safeguards” will be put in place to ensure this doesn’t happen again, and he will cooperate with Congress in its oversight “to get this thing fixed.”

“I’ll do everything in my power to ensure that nothing like this happens again,” Obama said in remarks delivered in under three and a half minutes.

The White House has faced widespread criticism for not standing up more quickly to the questions emerging from the fatal attacks on a U.S. mission in Libya, the Internal Revenue Service’s handling of requests for tax exemptions from Tea Party-related groups and the Justice Department’s tracking of Associated Press reporters’ phone calls.

The White House rose to all three today:

– Obama faced the television cameras this evening after meeting with high-level Treasury officials at the White House today about what the IRS’s inspector general had called “ineffective management” in the screening of requests for tax-exempt status for groups organized under section 501(c)(4) of the U.S. tax code — groups that are supposed to have only limited political activity. IRS employees in Cincinnati screened for the words Tea Party in their scrutiny. The broadcast and cable networks lined up to carry his words live.

– The Obama White House this afternoon released almost 100 pages of e-mail traffic among officials at the White House, CIA and State Department. The e-mails show the Central Intelligence Agency made major revisions to administration talking points after the attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya in Benghazi —as they were developed and before they were delivered to Congress and supplied to United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice. See the talking points here.

– This afternoon, the White House allowed that it had spoken with Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York about reintroducing a shield law to protect the confidential sources of reporters, following the revelation that the Justice Department had tracked the phone records of AP reporters citing an investigation into a leak with national security implications. The president supports the First Amendment, press secretary Jay Carney said today — a shield law should prove it.

In that scandal-industrial complex, that’s one busy day.

Original post is Charge of the Obama Brigade: IRS, Benghazi, Reporters by Political Capital.

Photograph by Saif Sahlah/AFP via Getty Images

Palestinians wave national flags during a gathering in the West Bank city of Jenin on Nov. 29, 2012 to support Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas who is heading to the United Nations General Assembly today with huge backing for his bid for UN recognition of statehood.

Just because a United Nations name plate calls you a state, that doesn’t make you one.

Still, at the world body, any entity, state or non-state can name itself.

Following a largely symbolic vote in the UN’s 193-member General Assembly, the Palestinians changed their name to “State of Palestine” on all their stationery and asked UN protocol to go along with that. The UN’s etiquette office agreed on Dec. 17: “Pursuant to your request, the designation of `State of Palestine’ shall be used by the Secretariat in all official United Nations documents.”

The Americans were not pleased. U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice today took exception to the rebranding, even if it’s confined to the 17 acres occupied by the world body in New York’s Midtown:

“Any reference to the `State of Palestine’ in the United Nations, including the use of the term `State of Palestine’ on the placard in the Security Council or the use of the term `State of Palestine’ in the invitation to this meeting or other arrangements for participation in this meeting, do not reflect acquiescence that `Palestine’ is a state.”

The Palestinians were quick to respond.

“It doesn’t matter if any country voted against” the designation,’ said Riad Malki, introduced at a Security Council meeting on the Palestinian question as foreign minister to the State of Palestine. `We expect all member states of the United Nations to respect, to adhere, the decision that was taken by the General Assembly of the United Nations on the 29th of November of 2012.”

Nine nations voted against this: the U.S., Israel, Canada, Czech Republic, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Panama.

Original post is Rice Riled by Palestine Placard by Political Capital.

Photograph by Ouahab Hebbat/AP Photo

Algerian men look at national newspapers headlining the terrorist attack and kidnapping in Amenas at a news stand in Algiers, on Jan. 17, 2013.

In the aftermath of a bruising partisan battle over what the Obama administration knew about an extremist attack in Benghazi, Libya, and when it knew it, officials are rationing their words for a new crisis in Algeria.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney condemned “in the strongest terms a terrorist attack” on a remote gas field in Algeria, where the Algerian government said militants took dozens of foreign hostages yesterday, reportedly in retaliation for a French military operation against armed extremists in neighboring Mali.

Beyond saying that “the best information we have at this time” is that Americans are among those taken hostage, Carney wouldn’t elaborate on what more the U.S. government knows, or even when the White House learned about an Algerian government operation today to rescue the hostages. The State Department and Defense Department were equally reticent in their briefings today.

Carney admitted to journalists that he didn’t want to say something that could come back to bite him or the administration. “This is a fluid situation. I wouldn’t want to say something that turned out not to be true, so I’ll leave it at that,” Carney said.

He joked with one reporter that she knew hat he was talking about, prompting knowing laughter in the press room.

No one in Washington has forgotten the bitter partisan aftermath of the Benghazi tragedy. Although President Barack Obama referred to the attack as “an act of terror” twice in the two days after the attack, other administration officials - including Carney – said the U.S. had no evidence it was a pre-planned attack.

It was talking points based on preliminary intelligence – which turned out to be incorrect — that sank the chances of Susan Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, a trusted advisor of President Barack Obama, to be nominated for secretary of state. At the behest of the White House, Rice appeared on Sunday television talk shows several days after the Benghazi killings, and described the attack as appearing to have started with protests over an offensive YouTube video.

Benghazi wasn’t the first time the administration briefed the media on initial reports that turned out to be incorrect. In May 2011, Carney was forced to revise the administration’s account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

John Brennan, Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser and his choice to be the next head of the CIA, initially told reporters that the al-Qaeda chief was armed, and that his wife had rushed at a Navy SEAL and tried to shield him from bullets. When setting the record straight, Carney said at the time: “What is true” is that “we provided a great deal of information with great haste.”

In refraining from saying too much about an evolving crisis this time, the administration seems to be taking the lessons of the messaging missteps after Abbottabad and Benghazi to heart.
 

Original post is Obama Administration Rations Words — Algerian Terrorism Post-Benghazi by Political Capital.

Photograph by Gianluigi Guercua/AFP via Getty Images

A Libyan woman raises her ink stained finger as she leaves a polling station after voting for Libya's General National Assembly in Tripoli on July 7, 2012.

Written by Flavia Krause-Jackson in New York

Even after a bruising week on Capitol Hill ducking cameras, Susan Rice has kept her voice alive on Twitter.

Today was no exception.

As @ambassadorrice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations branded the world body’s recognition of Palestine as an observer state “unfortunate & counterproductive.” With her trademark bluntness, she typed:

“Progress towards a just & lasting two-state solution cannot be made by pressing a green voting button in NY.’

and: “Long after the votes have been cast & speeches forgotten, it’s the Palestinians & Israelis who must still talk – and listen – to each other. ”
At one time disdainful of Twitter, the aspiring secretary of  state is a convert to the micro-blogging site, where she has more followers than  @VP Joe Biden and three times the number of that other famous Rice, Condoleezza.

The controversy surrounding her infamous Sept. 16 comments about the attack on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Beghazi, Libya,  has only boosted her popularity, and she now is edging toward the 230,000 mark.

Online — as in real life — she has fans as well as haters.

The 140-character limit on Twitter lends itself to Rice’s own personal style.

“I guess you could say I’m plainspoken,” she  told her Stanford alumni magazine in an interview in January 2000. “I can be diplomatic when I have to be. But I don’t have a lot of patience for B.S.”

Disgusted that Russia and China prevented the #UN Security Council from fulfilling its sole purpose, she typed furiously off her BlackBerry after a double veto on Syria. The so-called referendum yesterday in #Syria was clearly a sham, she wrote about President Bashar al-Assad’s efforts to address the unrest.

She has tweeted around the world. On a surprise visit to Libya, she said: #Libyan #women kick butt. On a trip to Kenya with colleagues from the Security Council, she told the Somali president: “get your act together.”

Still, her missives are not all about work.

At the end of the Jazz Day concert at the UN with Stevie Wonder, she mused:

“The General Assembly Hall has never been so cool and may never be again. #JazzDay”

Some are even intensely personal, such as the message on Jan. 27, when she gave her deceased father, Emmett Rice, a shout-out about a movie night. She tweeted: “My family & I saw #RedTails last weekend. Riveting, action-packed & moving film. Made me even more proud of my late Dad, a Tuskegee Airman.”

Original post is Rice Tweets: Libyan Women Kick… by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jimmy Jeong/Bloomberg

Pipes carry recovered bitumen from oil sands, near Conklin, Alberta, Canada.

Written with Jim Efstathiou Jr.

If  the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, ascends to secretary of state — no sure thing given the pre-emptive Republican strikes against her — she may have to sideline herself from the politically sensitive policy debate on whether to permit construction of a $7 billion pipeline from Canada’s oil sands region to Texas refineries.

The reason: Rice and her husband own shares valued at more than $4.1 million in five Canadian companies involved in oil sands development, including $300,000 to $600,000 in shares of TransCanada Corp., which is seeking State Department approval to build the Keystone XL pipeline.

Rice also holds stock worth $1.25 million to $1.5 million in Imperial Oil Ltd., the second-largest Canadian oil producer. Imperial is 70 percent owned by Exxon Mobil Corp. Her portfolio includes Canadian companies Cenovus Energy Inc., Suncor Energy Inc. and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., all of which operate in Western Canada’s oil sands region.

Investments in Canadian energy and financial companies account for a substantial share of their reported assets of $23.5 million to $43.5 million, according to federal disclosure reports compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington research group.

The State Department has jurisdiction over the pipeline because it would cross an international border. In 2011, an environmental study by the department found that the project poses “no significant impacts to most resources” along its route.

Already under fire from some Republican senators for her comments following the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, Rice now may have trouble with an important Democratic constituency, environmentalists.

Rice’s investments were brought to light in a report on the Natural Resources Defense Council’s OnEarth Web-site.

The NRDC opposes the Keystone XL project, which needs State Department approval because it crosses an international border.

“Rice’s financial holdings could raise questions about her status as a neutral decision maker,” wrote Scott Dodd, editor of OnEarth.org and author of the report.

Financial holdings do not necessarily preclude nomination or confirmation for a top administration post.

“Ambassador Rice is in full compliance with all financial disclosure requirements related to her service in the U.S. government and is committed to continuing to meet these obligations,” her spokeswoman, Erin Pelton, said in an e-mail.

TransCanada re-applied in May for a U.S. permit for parts of the Keystone XL pipeline, after a prior application was rejected by President Barack Obama on Jan. 18. Environmental groups objected to the route, citing a danger that leaks may pose to the Ogallala aquifer in Nebraska, a source of drinking-water source for 1.5 million people.

The decision may be among the early matters to be considered by whoever succeeds Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has said she will step down around the end of Obama’s first term. The OnEarth report notes that the other prominent candidate for secretary of state, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, who lists total asset of as much as $322 million, also holds shares in some Canadian energy companies, though not TransCanada.

Original post is Rice’s Oil Holdings Flagged — Keystone Pipeline Rests at State by Political Capital.

Photograph by Win McNamee/Getty Images

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, leaves the Capitol after meeting with members of the senate on Nov. 28, 2012 in Washington.

U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice was still on Capitol Hill today, still explaining her statements about the Sept. 11 Benghazi attack, and still not allaying Republican lawmakers’ doubts.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said she was “very troubled” after an hour-long meeting with Rice this morning.

“I still have many questions,” Collins told reporters, echoing statements made by Senators John McCain, Kelly Ayotte and Lindsey Graham after they met with Rice Tuesday, as Bloomberg reported. Republicans have said Rice misled Americans when, on Sept. 16 television talk shows, she falsely said the Benghazi attack resulted from a “spontaneous” demonstration against an anti-Islam video that militants then “hijacked.”

Collins, the top Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said she was particularly concerned that history had seemed to repeat itself in the Benghazi attack.

“We seem not to have learned from the 1998 bombings of two of our embassies in Africa at the time when Ambassador Rice was the assistant secretary for African affairs,” Collins said. “What troubles me so much is the Benghazi attack in many ways echoes those attacks.”

Both the 1998 and 2012 attacks came without warning and after additional security had been requested in the areas, Collins said.

Despite her criticism, Collins did not rule out Rice as a possible candidate to replace Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when asked by reporters.

“I would need to have additional information before I could support her nomination,” said Collins, who is considered less partisan and polarizing than McCain, Graham and Ayotte.

When pressed on the topic, Collins clarified her opinion on the coming appointment.

“I think John Kerry would be an excellent appointment and would be easily confirmed by his colleagues,” she said.

Original post is Rice Remains in Question: Collins ‘Very Troubled’ After Meeting by Political Capital.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., center, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., right, at a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Nov. 14, 2012, stating they'd block the nomination Susan Rice as Secretary of State. Photographer: J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

President Barack Obama had some fighting words today for the senator he faced in 2008:

If Sen. John McCain and allied Republican Lindsey Graham want to complain about the administration’s handling of the attack against the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, Obama said, the senator who served as the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in ’08 shouldn’t be picking on U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice — they should “go after” him.

The president’s ire for his erstwhile rival from Arizona and political ally from South Carolina involves his reported interest in nominating Rice for secretary of state, which he wouldn’t confirm in a White House news conference today. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton plans to step aside soon, opening the nation’s chief diplomatic post for appointment. McCain, criticizing Rice for her public representations of what initially happened in Benghazi, is speaking out against her nomination as secretary of state.

“If Senator McCain and Senator Graham and others want to go after somebody? They should go after me,” Obama said today. “And I’m happy to have that discussion with them.”

“But for them to go after the UN ambassador who had nothing to do with Benghazi?” he said, “And was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received? And to besmirch her reputation is outrageous. And, you know, we’re after an election now.”

“But when they go after the UN  ambassador, apparently because they think she’s an easy target, then they’ve got a problem with me,” the president said.

McCain, who had raised his complaints about Rice during the 2012 election campaign, is drawing a certain line now.

“I will do everything in my power to block her from being the United States Secretary of State,” McCain, an outspoken critic of the administration’s explanations of Benghazi, said in an appearance on Fox News. “She has proven that she either doesn’t understand or she is not willing to accept evidence on its face. There is no doubt five days later what this attack was.”

Without confirming his thinking on the State appointment, Obama said at his news conference: “Let me say specifically about Susan Rice, she has done exemplary work. She has represented the United States and our interests in the United Nations with skill, and professionalism, and toughness, and grace. As I’ve said before (on the question of Benghazi), she made an appearance at the request of the White House in which she gave her best understanding of the intelligence that had been provided to her.”

He said:  “And should I choose, if I think that she would be the best person to serve America in the capacity at the State Department, then I will nominate her. That’s not a determination that I’ve made yet.”

Original post is Obama to McCain: `Go After Me’ by Political Capital.