Fox News:
Samantha Power, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was 'unmasking' at such a rapid pace in the final months of the Obama administration that she averaged more than one request for every working day in 2016 – and even sought information in the days leading up to President Trump’s inauguration, multiple sources close to the matter told Fox News.If true, this is a monstrous allegation. This could prove the Obama administration was using the intelligence-gathering apparatus of the U.S. government for strictly partisan political purposes. If you can link it back to Obama himself, this would be bigger than Watergate.
Two sources, who were not authorized to speak on the record, said the requests to identify Americans whose names surfaced in foreign intelligence reporting, known as unmasking, exceeded 260 last year. One source indicated this occurred in the final days of the Obama White House.
The details emerged ahead of an expected appearance by Power next month on Capitol Hill. She is one of several Obama administration officials facing congressional scrutiny for their role in seeking the identities of Trump associates in intelligence reports – but the interest in her actions is particularly high.
In a July 27 letter to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said the committee had learned "that one official, whose position had no apparent intelligence-related function, made hundreds of unmasking requests during the final year of the Obama Administration."
The "official" is widely reported to be Power.
That is a LOT of "ifs". But it is certainly something that should be watched.
In other news...
CNN:
Puerto Rico's energy grid took such a severe blow from deadly Hurricane Maria that restoring power to everyone may take months, Gov. Ricardo Rosselló told CNN on Wednesday night.So with all that government spending, their infrastructure is still unable to withstand a hurricane?
The entire system is down, the governor said. No one on the island has power from utilities.
Puerto Rico, which has been through a long recession and is deeply in debt, has a power grid that is "a little bit old, mishandled and weak," Rosselló told "Anderson Cooper 360˚."
Next time some politician tells you, "Government overspending is no big deal," refer them to the example of Puerto Rico.
The inherent problem with government overspending is that it is done to win votes, and not prepare for a catastrophe. Preparing your electrical grid for a hurricane when you are smack dab in the middle of the Caribbean seems logical, but logic doesn't win votes.
Finally...
Politico:
Rand Paul might soon go down as the Republican who saved Obamacare — and he couldn’t care less.Actually, the fact Collins might support it tells you how close to Obamacare the new plan really is.
"I'm actually happy to be out there as the leading advocate for repealing Obamacare, not keeping it," the Kentucky Republican said in an interview. Of his GOP colleagues, Paul added: "These people, they so totally do not get it."
Despite being one of the Senate’s most conservative members, Paul has been the loudest GOP critic of legislation to repeal the health care law that Republicans are desperate to jam through before a Sept. 30 deadline. His recalcitrant opposition left GOP leaders with virtually no breathing room as their whipping got underway, since they can lose only two votes and still pass the bill.
Even the face of GOP moderation, Maine Sen. Susan Collins, initially expressed more openness to the so-called Graham-Cassidy bill than Paul had.
So what's Paul's beef?
But to Paul, his opposition to the Graham-Cassidy measure is a perfectly principled stand. The Graham-Cassidy plan would leave the crux of Obamacare intact, he argues, and that's simply not good enough for a party that has promised to nix the Democratic health care law.It all comes down to the question of whether to reject a step in the right direction because it doesn't go nearly far enough.
The Kentucky senator has rattled off a litany of complaints about Graham-Cassidy, saying it would just redistribute a mountain of federal cash from states that expanded Medicaid under Obamacare to states that chose not to. Because Republican states would largely benefit at the expense of Democratic ones, Paul said Tuesday, it essentially amounted to “petty partisanship.”
When pressed on the criticism from fellow Republicans that he was merely helping Democrats to keep Obamacare the law of the land, Paul responded: “Yeah, well, these people would be confused.”
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