memeorandum: All the Wrong People Are Getting Obamacare (Megan McArdle/Bloomberg)

1:45 AM ET, October 27, 2013

Top Items:

United States tracked Merkel's phone since 2002: report — (Reuters) - The United States may have bugged Angela Merkel's phone for more than 10 years, according to a news report on Saturday that also said President Barack Obama told the German leader he would have stopped it happening had he known about it.

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, The Verge and PoliticusUSA

Mark Landler / New York Times:

Rice Offers a More Modest Strategy for Mideast — WASHINGTON — Each Saturday morning in July and August, Susan E. Rice, President Obama's new national security adviser, gathered half a dozen aides in her corner office in the White House to plot America's future in the Middle East.

Discussion: ParaPundit

BBC:

US bugged Merkel's phone from 2002 until 2013, report claims — The US has been spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone since 2002, according to a report in Der Spiegel magazine. — The German publication claims to have seen secret documents from the National Security Agency …

Discussion: Gizmodo and Eschaton

Sarah Kliff / Wonkblog:

Exclusive: The feds have made 330,000 Obamacare subsidy calculations — More than 330,000 people have managed to get deep enough into new government health insurance Web sites to learn how much financial assistance they will receive purchasing coverage, the Internal Revenue Service said Saturday.

Discussion: Talking Points Memo and The Hill

HHS.govStrategy:

What's Working in the Marketplace: The Data Services Hub — Site Tags: — Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services — Saturday, October 26, 2013 — To give Americans a better way to shop for health coverage, the federal government and states recently launched Health Insurance Marketplaces.

Discussion: Politico and The Hill

Rosie Gray / BuzzFeed:

Libertarians And Progressives Team Up Against NSA Surveillance — Hundreds of protesters descend upon Washington to protest NSA surveillance practices. — Gary Johnson and Medea Benjamin — Rosie Gray — WASHINGTON — Progressives and libertarians came together in Washington on Saturday …

Discussion: Hot Air and Balloon Juice

Elise Viebeck / The Hill:
NSA critics rally, ‘Stop watching us’

Discussion: The Hinterland Gazette, The Raw Story and The Daily Caller

Megan McArdle / Bloomberg:

All the Wrong People Are Getting Obamacare — The state insurance exchanges have been the highlight of a so far dismal rollout process for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. When Obamacare's supporters are challenged on the law's merits, that's where they point to show …

Discussion: PERRspectives, Hit & Run, National Review, The Gateway Pundit, Michelle Malkin and CBS News

Rebecca Shabad / The Hill:

Cruz calls for ‘grassroots army’ to trample ObamaCare — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Saturday that his 21-hour Senate speech was a long time, but that's almost as long as it takes signing up on the ObamaCare website. — He was taking a shot at HealthCare.gov's technical setbacks …

Discussion: Liberaland

Peter Wallsten / Washington Post:

Republican congressman Jeff Denham will join Democrats in immigration overhaul push — A Republican congressman from a heavily Hispanic district is breaking ranks from his party to join Democrats in an eleventh-hour push for a broad immigration overhaul before the end of the year.

Discussion: Bloomberg, Talking Points Memo and The Hill

Steven Pearlstein / Wonkblog:

Marty Sullivan figured out how the world's biggest companies avoided billions in taxes. Here's how he wants to stop them. — Marty Sullivan in the Arlington garage where he parses filings to figure out how multi-national corporations avoid taxes. (Photo by Matt McClain/ The Washington Post)

Discussion: Brad DeLong

Philip Elliott / Associated Press:

Cuccinelli Tests Conservatism Va. Governor Race — Ken Cuccinelli's campaign for governor of Virginia has always been a test of whether a deeply conservative Republican could win in a swing-voting state. — For months, the attorney general — known outside his state for mounting …

Discussion: Politico

Elise Viebeck / The Hill:

Obama: GOP ‘rooting’ for ObamaCare failure — President Obama blasted GOP opponents of his healthcare law as hypocrites after Republicans expressed concerns about the rocky rollout of HealthCare.gov. — In his weekly address, Obama suggested that the GOP's focus on the issue was in bad faith …

Discussion: Scared Monkeys, Liberal Values and Weasel Zippers

Catherine Thompson / Talking Points Memo:

NSA: Website Crash Was Internal Error, Not Hacker Attack — The National Security Agency said in a statement late Friday that its website was brought down for a few hours by a glitch, not by rumored hackers. — “NSA.gov was not accessible for several hours tonight because of an internal error …

Discussion: CANNONFIRE, Business Insider and RT

Lee Ferran / ABC News:
NSA Blames ‘Internal Error,’ Not Hackers, For Website Crash

Discussion: Mediaite and Gizmodo

New York Times:

Promised Fix for Health Site Could Squeeze Some Users — WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Friday that it would fix problems in the federal health insurance marketplace by Nov. 30, just two weeks before the deadline to sign up for coverage to replace health insurance policies …

Discussion: Nextgov, The Caucus and Forbes