Like to laugh? Like to be informed? Then sign up for TheDC Morning email here.
1.) Was Obama wiretapped? — Seems unlikely, but Russ Tice says yes. TheDC’s Jeff poor reports:
“Former National Security Agency analyst Russ Tice, a Bush-era whistleblower, has recently made some startling claims that the federal government’s wiretap endeavors targeted high-ranking government individuals including military officials, lawmakers and diplomats. One of those targets wound up being elected president. In appearance on ‘The Boiling Frogs Show’ on Wednesday, Tice made the astonishing claim that the NSA had ordered wiretaps on phones connected to then-Democratic Senate hopeful Barack Obama in 2004, weeks prior to his breakout at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston.”
2.) Lonegan cometh … to the Senate? — New Jersey is a Democratic state. But Steve Lonegan is going to give it a try. The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Robbie Soave reports:
“Can a staunch conservative who unabashedly opposes President Barack Obama on everything — from taxes to health care to National Security Agency surveillance — win in deep-blue New Jersey? Steve Lonegan thinks so — and is campaigning to prove it. Lonegan, a former Republican mayor of Bogota, New Jersey and former statewide director of the free-market activist group Americans for Prosperity, has filed to run in a special election to fill the Senate vacancy created by the recent death of Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg.”
3.) Coalition of the unwilling — A gaggle of senators is fighting to stop American weapons from going to Syria. TheDC’s Alex Pappas reports:
“Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is one of four senators on Capitol Hill who introduced a new bill Thursday that would block President Obama from getting involved in the Syrian civil war. It comes after the Obama administration announced plans last week to send arms to the rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s regime after determining Assad had been using chemical weapons on its people. The bill proposed Thursday would stop ‘the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, or any other agency or entity of the United States involved in intelligence activities’ from ‘supporting, directly or indirectly, military or paramilitary operations in Syria by any nation, group, organization, movement, or individual.'”
4.) Sen. Nostradamus — Mitch McConnell knew about things before things happened. TheDC’s Matt Lewis opines:
“Mitch McConnell warned us this would happen. Almost exactly a year ago, on June 15th, 2012, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gave a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, outlining what he described then as ‘growing threats to our First Amendment rights.’ Remarkably, he also condemned the harassment that Tea Party groups had endured from the IRS (this, of course, was months before the scandal drew national attention.) On Thursday, McConnell gave The Daily Caller an exclusive preview of remarks he plans to deliver at AEI on Friday. Regarding his prescience last year, McConnell joked, ‘I’m going to resist the temptation to say I told you so… but I told you so.'”
5.) Tweet of Yesterday — Donald J. Trump: My people caught the person who committed “forgery” of the James Gandolfini-Obama Care phoney quote attributed to me-fraud. Arrest coming?
6.) Today in North Korean News — BREAKING: “Round-table Talks Held with Teenagers Who Come back to Embrace of DPRK”