Blog Posts by Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News

President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron in the Oval Office on Monday, May 13, 2013. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)Exactly 10 days ago, President Barack Obama was piously telling reporters who cover him that free speech and an independent press are “essential pillars of our democracy.” On Monday, The Associated Press accused his administration of undermining that very pillar by secretly obtaining two months’ worth of telephone records of AP reporters and editors.

“We regard this action by the Department of Justice as a serious interference with AP’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news,” AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.

The latest revelations are sure to pour fuel on the fire of Republican-driven Richard Nixon comparisons. They come in the wake of revelations that the IRS may have improperly scrutinized the tax-exempt status of conservative, tea party-linked groups. This might, in other words, not be a great time to announce a groundbreaking trip to China.

And the news threatens to pile fresh political woes on a second term already burdened by a painful gun-control defeat, a seemingly stalled economic agenda and Republican rage at the botched response to the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya.

The revelations that the Justice Department may have sought AP phone records drew an angry response from Republican House Speaker John Boehner's office. “The First Amendment is first for a reason. If the Obama administration is going after reporters’ phone records, they better have a damned good explanation," said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel.

And Laura Murphy, a top American Civil Liberties Union official in Washington, D.C., condemned "unwarranted surveillance" of the press and urged Holder to explain what transpired "so that we can make sure this kind of press intimidation does not happen again.”

Holder was expected to face questions on the issue when he appears Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office for the District of Columbia did not answer a question from Yahoo News on whether other news outlets had been targeted. The spokesman, Bill Miller, did not confirm the AP allegations, but insisted in a statement that "we take seriously our obligations to follow all applicable laws, federal regulations, and Department of Justice policies when issuing subpoenas for phone records of media organizations."

Pruitt, in his letter to Holder, fiercely disagreed.

President Barack Obama during a joint news conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP

President Barack Obama on Monday furiously dismissed as a "political circus" Republican charges that his administration had misled the public about the Sept. 12, 2012, attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya. Obama said the accusations of a cover-up dishonor the memory of the four Americans killed in the onslaught.

"There’s no 'there' there,” Obama insisted during a joint question-and-answer session with British Prime Minister David Cameron at the White House. "And the fact that this keeps on getting churned out, frankly, has a lot to do with political motivations."

The president’s angry words came after news reports surfaced Friday that the White House had overseen a process that repeatedly watered down administration talking points on the attack, removing references to possible involvement by al-Qaida and to prior warnings about threats in Benghazi. Republicans have charged that the White House was worried about the potential political fallout from the spectacular terrorist attack during Obama's re-election campaign. The White House has repeatedly denied that it deliberately misled the public.

"The whole issue of talking points, frankly, throughout this process has been a sideshow," Obama said.

The talking points, which portrayed the attack as evolving from a demonstration of anger at an Internet video that mocked Islam, "pretty much matched the assessments that I was receiving at that time in my presidential daily briefing," he added, referring to his top-secret morning intelligence review with the CIA.

While protests against the video in Egypt led to an assault on the American embassy in Cairo, officials in Libya never reported a demonstration outside the compound in Benghazi before the assault that claimed the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Obama aides have said that the decision to scrub references in the talking points to al-Qaida and another extremist group, Ansar al-Sharia, reflected the intelligence community's uncertainty about the role they played.

"Immediately after this event happened, we were not clear who exactly had carried it out, how it had occurred, what the motivations were," Obama said. "It happened at the same time as we had seen attacks on U.S. embassies in Cairo as a consequence of this film. And nobody understood exactly what was taking place during the course of those first few days."

The president also pointed to his first public remarks on the attack, in the Rose Garden on Sept. 12, 2012, when he lumped the events in Benghazi in with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strikes as "acts of terror."

But he and other senior officials declined in subsequent days to label the attack the work of terrorists. And U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice linked the Benghazi assault to the Internet video when she appeared on morning news shows the first Sunday after the attack.

President Barack Obama (left) and British Prime Minister David Cameron leave their White House press conference on Monday. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)President Barack Obama declared Monday that Americans have the right to expect "absolute integrity" from the IRS and that it would be "outrageous" if the agency improperly targeted conservative political groups.

"This is pretty straightforward. If, in fact, IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported on and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that's outrageous, and there is no place for it," Obama said during a joint question-and-answer session with British Prime Minister David Cameron at the White House. "You don't want the IRS ever being perceived to be biased and anything less than neutral in terms of how they operate."

The president said he learned that the Internal Revenue Service may have improperly scrutinized the tax-exempt status of tea party-related groups when the news broke on Friday.

Obama's strong words followed an outcry from many Republicans over the IRS's apparent display of political bias. Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a GOP moderate, said Sunday that the IRS’s actions needed to be “personally condemned” by the president, who must “make crystal clear that this is totally unacceptable.”

Collins also called into question the IRS’s early claim that the improper behavior was the work of low-level staffers.

White House press secretary Jay Carney at a White House news briefing on May 10. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)President Barack Obama's standoff with congressional Republicans over Benghazi escalated on Friday as the White House rebuffed House Speaker John Boehner's demand that it turn over unclassified internal emails linked to the deadly Sept. 11, 2012, attack.

Press secretary Jay Carney rejected the request and again accused Republicans of trying to milk the tragic death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans for political gain.

“They’re asking for emails that they’ve already seen, that they were able to review and take extensive notes on, apparently provide verbatim information to folks,” Carney told reporters.

His comments came hours after ABC News reported that talking points crafted by the administration to explain the attack to the public underwent extensive revisions at the State Department's request and with copious White House oversight.

"The fact that the very people who’ve reviewed this and probably leaked it—generally speaking, not specifically—are asking for something they’ve already had access to I think demonstrates that this is what it was from the beginning in terms of Republican handling of it, which is a highly political matter," the spokesman said.

Carney noted that key Republicans had been given access to internal emails in which officials discussed the drafting of the talking points. Lawmakers were able "to review them, take notes, spend as much with with them as they liked," Carney said. (The lawmakers were were not allowed to make copies or take the documents out, which is known as an "in camera" review. )

"There is a long precedent here for protecting internal deliberations. This is across administrations of both parties," he said. House Republicans have hinted they may try to subpoena the emails if the administration does not cooperate.

Prince Harry and first lady Michelle Obama at the White House on Thursday. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
Britain’s Prince Harry drew cheers and shrieks of delight Thursday as he made a surprise appearance at a Mother's Day Tea hosted by first lady Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, Vice President Joe Biden's wife.

Obama did all the talking as the guests in the State Dining Room of the White House, chiefly women in the military, their children, their mothers and some military spouses, snapped phone-camera pictures and chattered excitedly.

The first lady—President Barack Obama was out of town—emphasized Harry's service in Britain's military and noted he had returned in January from his second tour in Afghanistan.

"For the past few years, he has focused on honoring the sacrifice and service of our veterans and military families, especially now that the war in Afghanistan is drawing to a close," she said.

"We are absolutely thrilled that he could be with us today," the first lady said, adding that her husband "wanted to be here to personally thank you for your service."

But then, a warning:

John Kerry with Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino on May 9. (Mladen Antonov/AP, Pool)Secretary of State John Kerry promised Thursday to leave “no stone unturned” in the investigation into the deadly terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, and vowed that anyone guilty of wrongdoing would be disciplined "appropriately."

Kerry did not directly comment on the contentious House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on the tragedy a day earlier, but vowed to consider "any recent evidence." And he pledged his full cooperation with a Republican-led investigation being conducted by five key House committees.

"I will tell you this: The State Department will leave no stone unturned," the top U.S. diplomat told reporters as he met with Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino. "I am absolutely determined that this issue will be answered, will be put to bed, and if there’s any culpability in any area that is appropriate to be handled in some way with some discipline, it will be appropriately handled."

Kerry said he had "made it crystal clear" to the Republican committee chairman that his chief of staff, David Wade, would work "to answer any questions that they have."

The attack, which took place on Sept. 11, 2012, when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, claimed the lives of four Americans including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

One of President Barack Obama's most trusted aides, Valerie Jarrett, hosted a bipartisan delegation of lawmakers on Thursday to discuss ways to combat sexual assault in the military, the White House said, emphasizing that such crimes "will not be tolerated."

"The group discussed various legislative proposals as well as actions that the administration could take to hold offenders accountable, improve the reporting process, support victims and work towards the prevention of sexual assault," an Obama aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Yahoo News.

The meeting included Republican and Democratic lawmakers from the Senate and House of Representatives.

Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, one of the participants, took to Twitter to hail the effort.

V productive meeting at the @whitehouse this AM w/@vj44, Tina Tchen & my colleagues re legislation to address sexual assault in the military

— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) May 9, 2013

Below is the list of attendees as provided by the White House:

Gina McCarthy testifies before a Senate committee on April 11. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)The White House on Thursday ripped Senate Republicans for stalling votes on the confirmation of President Barack Obama's nominee to run the Environmental Protection Agency, Gina McCarthy.

“There has been a historic level of obstructionism, absolutely, from the Senate on this nomination and others,“ press secretary Jay Carney told reporters after all eight GOP members of the Senate Environment Committee refused to take part in a scheduled vote that would have sent McCarthy's confirmation to the full Senate for approval.

(Later in the day, a senior Republican Senate aide emailed the verbal equivalent of an eye-roll and a link to this New York Times story, which shows the Democrats using the same tactic in 2003.)

Republicans have reportedly deluged McCarthy with more than 1,000 written questions since her confirmation hearing, drawing charges from Democrats that the purpose is to kill the nomination.