Obama's Counsel Told of IRS Audit Findings Weeks Ago  —  The White House's chief lawyer learned weeks ago that an audit of the Internal Revenue Service likely would show that agency employees inappropriately targeted conservative groups, a senior White House official said Sunday.

A rare peek into a Justice Department leak probe  —  When the Justice Department began investigating possible leaks of classified information about North Korea in 2009, investigators did more than obtain telephone records of a working journalist suspected of receiving the secret material.

UPDATED: Virginia GOP Nominee For Attorney General Introduced Bill Forcing Women To Report Their Miscarriages To Police  —  If a woman in Virginia has a miscarriage without a doctor present, they must report it within 24 hours to the police or risk going to jail for a full year.

On Yahoo-Tumblr  —  It now looks pretty certain that Yahoo has pulled off a deal to buy Tumblr for 1.1B.  The relationship between WordPress and Tumblr has always been pretty friendly: Tumblr's own blog used to be on WP, WordPress.com supports Tumblr as a Publicize option alongside Twitter and Facebook …

7 Juicy Claims From A Romney Campaign Insider's New Book  —  Former policy aide Gabriel Schoenfeld's new book, A Bad Day on the Romney Campaign: An Insider's Account , blames Romney's staff for his defeat.  Romney aides have dismissed the account , saying Schoenfeld was not as high …

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Four key Hillary Clinton staffers from 2008 unlikely to sign on for 2016 bid  —  Howard Wolfson, the 2008 communications director for Hillary Rodham Clinton, has said he will not return for a 2016 presidential campaign.  Neither, for that matter, will Neera Tanden, the campaign's policy director.

Three Signs There's a Cover-Up  —  The late columnist William Safire once said that a good clue that someone in Washington was engaged in “an artful dodge,” i.e., a cover-up, was that they used the phrase “mistakes were made.”  Safire defined it as a “passive-evasive way of acknowledging error …

How Obama Handles Crisis  —  The handwringers and bed wetters in the D.C. punditocracy should know that Barack Obama will never be on their timeline, says his longtime speechwriter Jon Favreau.  —  Honestly, they act like it's his first crisis.  —  Sometime after the infamous Denver debate last fall …

The Good News About Race and Voting  —  Election polling data show that few Americans of any race report any problems casting a ballot.  —  In the next several weeks the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of the requirement that several states, mostly in the South …

True Scandal  —  Catherine Engelbrecht's tale has all the markings of a classic conspiracy theory: She says she thinks that because of her peaceful political activity, she and her family was targeted for scrutiny by hostile federal agencies.  —  Yet as news emerges that the Internal Revenue Service wielded …

Lewis Butts busted for campaign sign caper  —  Democratic mayoral hopeful Lewis Butts meets with the PennLive/Patriot-News editorial board on April 12, 2013.  Christine Baker |  cbaker@pennlive.com (Christine Baker)  —  Harrisburg mayoral candidate Lewis L. Butts, Jr. has been charged …

State Dept. Spokeswoman Refuses to Criticize Iran for Excluding Women Candidates from Election  —  State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki refused to criticize Iran for excluding women candidates from the upcoming “election” there.  The remarkable exchange, which concludes with Psaki saying this …

Sorting Out the Scandals  —  The irs's targeting of Tea Party groups is, however, an actual full-blown scandal.  In fact, it is several scandals.  The most obvious one was the lunkheaded effort by midlevel IRS employees to use an ideological shortcut—auditing groups with Tea Party and Patriots …