Blog Posts by Olivier Knox

President Barack Obama on Thursday invited Americans to a Twitter press conference of sorts, taking seven questions on topics like how he aims to curb oil imports, boost job growth or help homeowners struggling with their mortgages. Leaving little to chance, the White House advertised the "#WHchat" hashtag for the online event several times throughout the day but only revealed that the president himself would answer the questions shortly before he got online.

As a result, most of the queries were made hours before Obama took to a laptop, his shirtsleeves rolled up, after a speech in the battleground state of Iowa.

"This is barack — let's get this started —bo," Obama said, using his initials to show that he, not a White House staffer, was at the keyboard controlling the www.twitter.com/whitehouse account.

The first question came from @asturtz, who had asked, "What are we doing to curb, better yet avoid, dependency on oil?"

".@asturtz all of the above energy strategy; increase dom. oil & gas. increase energy efficiency. 2x clean energy. 2x car fuel eff. -bo" was the president's reply.

Not all of the questions he chose to answer were friendly. @jwarner180 asked: "Fossil fuels are much much much cheaper and our economy is based on cheap energy. Why push Algae?"

Escalation? In an unusual one-two punch, President Barack Obama's campaign and the White House hit back Thursday at Mitt Romney's second general election TV ad for its claim that, if elected, the Republican would take on China over its allegedly unfair trade practices.

"Despite his tough talk now, Governor Romney wasn't always for enforcing trade laws against China," White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One.

Carney, who frequently shies away from questions about the campaign, referred reporters to Romney's book "No Apology: The Case for American Greatness." He said the former Massachusetts governor had "attacked the president for standing up for American workers and businesses by enforcing trade law against China, even calling it 'bad for the nation and our workers.'" (Carney did not use the book's title. But in a separate press release, the Obama campaign cited the same quote and did so).

"The fact that Gov. Romney is criticizing the president from one side despite having occupied the other side of the issue I suppose is not very surprising," Carney said.

(Stop and consider that the totality of the Romney ad's comment on the issue is a pledge that on his hypothetical first day in office, "President Romney stands up to China on trade and demands they play by the rules.")

The Obama campaign also got in on the action, with former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland pointing to the same passage in the same book and making, in essence, the same accusation.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday sharply criticized Pakistan for its "unjust and unwarranted" treatment of Pakistani doctor Shakil Afridi, sentenced to prison for 33 years on treason charges for his pivotal role in helping to hunt down Osama bin Laden.

"The United States does not believe there is any basis for holding Dr. Afridi. We regret both the fact that he was convicted and the severity of his sentence," Clinton said as she met with New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully.

"His help, after all, was instrumental in taking down one of the world's most notorious murderers. That was clearly in Pakistan's interests as well as ours and the rest of the world," she said.

The doctor, 48, was reportedly sentenced to 33 years in prison and fined 320,000 Pakistani rupees, equivalent to about $3,477, by a tribal court.

Afridi had been accused of running a fake hepatitis B vaccination program, collecting DNA samples reportedly used by U.S. intelligence officers to track bin Laden to Abbottabad, where Navy SEALs killed him in a raid on his compound last year.

"This action by Dr. Afridi to help bring about the end of the reign of terror designed and executed by bin Ladin was not in any way a betrayal of Pakistan.  And we have made that very well known and we will continue to press it with the government of Pakistan," Clinton said. "We are raising it and we will continue to do so because we think that his treatment is unjust and unwarranted."

The White House echoed Clinton's remarks, saying it saw "no basis" for his detention. "I think it's an important point that any assistance rendered by anyone in the effort to bring Osama bin Laden to justice was assistance not against Pakistan, but against al-Qaida and against Osama bin Laden," spokesman Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One.

In retaliation for the sentence, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted Thursday to cut aid to Pakistan by $33 million—$1 million per year of his sentence—Agence France-Presse reported.

President Barack Obama returns to the fairgrounds in the battleground state of Iowa on Thursday—and his campaign wants you to remember it as the place where Mitt Romney made his famous declaration that "corporations are people, my friend."

The Obama campaign invited supporters to the president's campaign rally with a 34-second video that stars Romney (Obama never appears) in his Aug. 11, 2011, exchange with hecklers at the fair.

"We can raise taxes on people," Romney says, only to be cut off with a cry of "corporations."

"Corporations are people, my friend," the former Massachusetts governor replies. "No they're not," someone shouts. "Of course they are," Romney shoots back. "Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes?"

Obama was due to speak at the fairgrounds at 6:55 p.m. local time.

"See you there," his campaign video says.

"Instead of spending the last three years making good on his campaign promises, President Obama has presided over an economy where millions of middle-class families are still struggling—and all he has to offer now are tired political attacks," countered Romney campaign spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg, who dismissed what she called Obama's "flailing attacks."

"Mitt Romney is offering voters a positive vision for our country, and he will take action on day one of his presidency to get our economy moving again," she said in an email message to Yahoo News.

Jane Lynch narrates. Lady Gaga claps. Barney Frank has a cameo. Same-sex couples embrace. President Barack Obama's reelection campaign released a new ad on Wednesday to court lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) voters.

The video has playful moments. After Lynch says that Obama "counted us as friends," the spot features Obama speaking to the Human Rights Campaign's annual dinner in October 2011, telling them he held "talks with your leader, Lady Gaga. She was wearing 16-inch heels." The pop songstress is shown clapping.

It also has some somber moments. Lynch says that in 2008, "we elected a man who understood our struggles," and the video cuts to Obama's message for the "It Gets Better" anti-bullying campaign, which was a response to the suicides of several teens picked on for being gay.

Obama, the first sitting president to support same-sex marriage, credits "family and friends" for his evolution on gay rights as the video shows a photograph of him talking to Democratic Representative Barney Frank.

"The fight for LGBT rights is consistent with that most important part of America's character, which is to constantly expand opportunity and fairness to everybody," Obama says in the ad. The president abruptly announced his backing for same-sex marriage on May 9 after Vice President Biden declared his support in a television interview a few days earlier.

In a wide-ranging, campaign-style rebuttal of Republican attacks on his handling of world affairs, President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that "exceptional" America had "led from the front" in the Libyan war.

Delivering the commencement speech at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Obama was clearly taking aim at conservative criticisms that he does not believe in American exceptionalism and that he has settled for a "lead from behind" strategy in Libya and elsewhere.

Obama recited some of what he considers his top foreign policy achievements, including "preventing a massacre in Libya with an international mission in which the United States—and our Air Force—led from the front."

"The United States has been, and will always be, the one indispensable nation in world affairs," he told the cadets. "America is exceptional."

"I see an American Century because no other nation seeks the role that we play in global affairs, and no other nation can play the role that we play in global affairs," Obama said.

"No other nation has sacrificed more—in treasure, in the lives of our sons and daughters—so that these freedoms could take root and flourish around the world," the president said. "And no other nation has made the advancement of human rights and dignity so central to its foreign policy."

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has repeatedly made an issue on the campaign trail of Obama's relationship to "American exceptionalism."

"Our president doesn't have the same feelings about American exceptionalism that we do," Romney said as he stumped in Wisconsin in March. "And I think over the last three or four years, some people around the world have begun to question that."

Barely one month after Navy SEALs staged the daring raid that killed Osama bin Laden, Hollywood came knocking at the Pentagon. "Hurt Locker" screenwriter Mark Boal's late-night June 5, 2011, email to a Defense Department spokesman led to unlocked doors at the Pentagon, the White House and the CIA—even getting him access to a SEAL planner closely tied to the raid. The remarkable cooperation on the development of a movie about the raid has a top congressional Republican crying foul and angrily asking whether administration officials inappropriately shared the nation's secrets. The White House denies any wrongdoing.

The conservative activist group Judicial Watch obtained reams of documents related to the filmmakers' access with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed earlier this year. The movie, tentatively titled "Zero Dark Thirty," is scheduled for release in December 2012.

Boal and Kathryn Bigelow, who directed the Oscar-winning "Hurt Locker," sat down on July 15, 2011, with a handful of Pentagon officials, including Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers. According to a transcript of the meeting, Vickers simultaneously offered up the SEAL planner and warned that the Pentagon couldn't seem too forthcoming because of the repeated official warnings against talking to the media. Specifically, Vickers said, Adm. William McRaven, the head of the Joint Special Operations Command and the man in charge of the May 2011 raid, wanted to avoid the appearance of a double standard.

"Now, on the operators side, Adm McRaven and Adm Olson do not want to talk directly, because it's just a bad, their [sic] just concerned as commanders of the force and they're telling them all the time—don't you dare talk to anybody, that it's just a bad example if it gets out—even with all sorts of restrictions and everything," Vickers explained to Boal and Bigelow.

Instead, "the basic idea is they'll make a guy available who was involved from the beginning as a planner; a SEAL Team 6 Operator and Commander," Vickers said.

"That's dynamite, by the way, " Boal replied, in a transcript of the exchange, one of the documents Judicial Watch posted online.

"That's incredible," added Bigelow.

The White House on Tuesday warily welcomed word that the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency was close to a breakthrough agreement with Iran to allow international inspectors to get a look at key sites in Tehran's nuclear program, which world powers say is a secret effort to obtain atomic weapons. Spokesman Jay Carney said the international community would keep tightening tough economic sanctions on Iran.

"We will continue to pressure Tehran, continue to move forward with the sanctions that will be coming online as the year progresses, and we expect those to have the kind of effect on Iran in terms of making it clear to the regime what the price of a continued failure to meet its obligations will mean for that country and for its economy," he said.

Still, Carney told reporters that the possible deal between the Islamic republic and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was "a step forward" in diplomatic efforts to end the tense standoff. President Barack Obama pointedly said that "all options are on the table" -- diplomatic talk for not ruling out the use of military force.

"The president has made clear that there is not an infinite amount of time here for the Iranians to act.  That's why it is so important for them to take seriously these negotiations, to take seriously the opportunity created here for Iran to rejoin the community of nations if the leadership so chooses to," Carney said at his daily briefing.

"We will make judgments about Iran's behavior based on actions, not just promises or agreements," he stressed.