White House

On Twitter this morning, David Axelrod, a former top political adviser to Barack Obama, tried to downplay the significance of the growing Benghazi scandal. "I think this story is BS," he said, arguing that those concerned about the Obama adminstration's handling of the terror attack are really only concerned about a possible Hillary Clinton run for president.

Last week, the Benghazi talking points took center stage in the ongoing investigation of the 9/11 anniversary attacks in Libya.

White House spokesman Jay Carney refused to answer questions about the federal government monitoring the Associated Press's telephone records. Instead, Carney "referred questions" to officials in the Justice Department. 

Here's the report of the pool reporter asking Carney, while covering President Obama's New York fundraisers:

The White House counsel apparently heard about the IRS scandal in April, according to Jay Carney:

Carney: “The WH counsel’s office was alerted the week of April 22 of this year” re IRS IG report

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) May 13, 2013

Carney on why counsel didn’t notify Obama re IRS: “This is a normal kind of notification”

Saturday, the White House retweeted a link to an OregonLive.com story on competition among healthcare insurers purportedly instigated by Obamacare:

On that IRS business, Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post insists that President Obama:

Liberal former congressman Dennis Kucinich blamed President Obama's Libya policy for the death of four Americans in Benghazi. Kucinich also said the Obama administration politicized the response to Benghazi because they "were in the circumference of an election, and when you get on the eve of an election, everything becomes political. "

A little scare at the White House this morning, via the pool report:

Jay Carney aggressively defended the Obama administration’s handling of the Benghazi attacks and the revision of CIA talking points Friday in an uncharacteristically hostile White House press briefing. But in his attempts to protect himself and his administration colleagues, Carney offered a series of highly misleading answers that seem likely to do additional damage to his cause and White House credibility.