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With three different scandals threatening to consume the White House last week—the Benghazi cover-up, the Justice Department’s seizure of the phone records of dozens of Associated Press reporters, and the revelation of an anti-Tea Party inquisition by the Internal Revenue Service—CNBC’s John Harwood offered his journalistic peers some advice on Twitter: “Those of us in political-media world should just shut up about ‘narratives’ and focus on what’s true.” CBS anchor Scott Pelley joined in: “We are getting big stories wrong, over and over again.”
With three different scandals threatening to consume the White House last week—the Benghazi cover-up, the Justice Department’s seizure of the phone records of dozens of Associated Press reporters, and the revelation of an anti-Tea Party inquisition by the Internal Revenue Service—CNBC’s John Harwood offered his journalistic peers some advice on Twitter: “Those of us in political-media world should just shut up about ‘narratives’ and focus on what’s true.” CBS anchor Scott Pelley joined in: “We are getting big stories wrong, over and over again.”
Treasury secretary Jack Lew asked Steven Miller, the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, to resign his post in response to the reports that the IRS had unfairly singled out conservative non-profit groups for close scrutiny. Miller has resigned, President Barack Obama said in a speech Wednesday night. The New York Times has more:
Not front page material in the Grey Lady's news judgment. But good enough for page A-11. With the third paragraph reassuring readers that an agency spokesperson had insisted
When Republican senator Tim Scott addresses an audience, he paces back and forth on the stage. He doesn’t use notes or look at a teleprompter. He punctuates with his hands, pointing his index finger outward or turning his palms upward. He looks and sounds like a revivalist preacher or a motivational speaker. When he asks his audience a question, he expects to hear an answer.
“You want to listen to a quick story?” he asked the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month. They did, so he told one.
When Republican senator Tim Scott addresses an audience, he paces back and forth on the stage. He doesn’t use notes or look at a teleprompter. He punctuates with his hands, pointing his index finger outward or turning his palms upward. He looks and sounds like a revivalist preacher or a motivational speaker. When he asks his audience a question, he expects to hear an answer.
“You want to listen to a quick story?” he asked the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month. They did, so he told one.
There wasn’t much in the way of substance to distinguish Marco Rubio’s official Republican response to the State of the Union Address from the Tea Party response by Rubio’s Senate colleague, Rand Paul. Both were delivered by potential 2016 presidential nominees who entered the Senate on a wave of grassroots support in 2010. Both senators offered conservative rebuttals to President Obama’s stridently pro-government address.
President Barack Obama's closest political adviser, David Axelrod, is scheduled to appear at a fundraiser later today for a Democratic candidate for Congress who linked the Tea Party with the shooting in Tucson that injured former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The Democrat that will be joined by Axelrod is former congressman Bill Foster who is running for a House seat in the Illinois.