Obama unaware as U.S. spied on world leaders: officials.  —  The National Security Agency ended a program used to spy on German Chancellor Angela Merkel and a number of other world leaders after an internal Obama administration review started this summer revealed to the White House the existence of the operations, U.S. officials said.

60 Minutes: Benghazi  —  The following script is from “Benghazi” which aired on Oct. 27, 2013.  The correspondent is Lara Logan.  Max McClellan, producer.  —  When Chris Stevens was killed in Benghazi, Libya, on the anniversary of September 11th last year, it was only the sixth …

McCain: Clinton ‘Very Strong Candidate’  —  Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, right, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talk prior to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee nomination hearing in Washington, D.C.  —  Sen. John McCain knows a few things about presidential elections …

HHS says Obamacare Web problem on Sunday linked to Verizon Terremark  —  The Obama administration is attributing Sunday outages on HealthCare.gov to technical failures by Verizon Terremark, the company operating the federal data hub.  —  Visitors to the federal exchange were unable to access the website late Sunday.

The Big Kludge  —  The good news about HealthCare.gov, the portal to Obamacare's health exchange, is that the administration is no longer minimizing its problems.  That's the first step toward fixing the mess — and it will get fixed, although it's anyone's guess whether the new promise …

PARTY CRASHERS  —  In the late nineteen-sixties, Mitch McConnell came to Washington to work as an aide to Senator Marlow Cook, a Kentucky Republican.  Cook backed clean-air standards and limits on strip mining.  It was a time of political diversity among Republicans: in 1970 …

House leaders plot new fall GOP strategy  —  For the first time in months, House Republicans are facing no immediate cataclysmic deadlines, and GOP leaders are struggling to come up with an agenda to fill the 19 legislative days that are left in 2013.  —  Need evidence?

Is Glenn Greenwald the Future of News?  —  Much of the speculation about the future of news focuses on the business model: How will we generate the revenues to pay the people who gather and disseminate the news?  But the disruptive power of the Internet raises other profound questions …

Why is broadband more expensive in the US?  —  Home broadband in the US costs far more than elsewhere.  At high speeds, it costs nearly three times as much as in the UK and France, and more than five times as much as in South Korea.  Why?  —  Men's haircuts, loaves of bread …

How Kentucky Built The Country's Best Obamacare Website  —  Kentucky did it right.  The state's online health insurance marketplace has become Obamacare's city on a hill while the federal HealthCare.gov has been flummoxed by a month of glitches and bad press.

More on Senator Cruz's health insurance  —  When I posted about Senator Cruz's health insurance last week, I did not have all the relevant information, something I admitted in the post.  Since then, some readers and Adrianna have brought some of the missing information to my attention.  This is an update.

Graham threatens to block all nominations over Benghazi survivors  —  Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Monday he would block confirmation of every presidential nomination until U.S. personnel who witnessed the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi were made available to congressional investigators.

GOP is deluding itself on spending  —  In Playboy magazine's current issue, Sen. Bernie Sanders offers an “Emperor Has No Clothes” view of Washington's current budget talks.  —  Later he added: “You would think that before you cut health care, education, nutrition or Social Security, you might want to take a hard look at that issue.

After troops leave, U.S. to lose access to Afghan reconstruction projects worth billions  —  As coalition forces withdraw from Afghanistan, U.S.-funded reconstruction projects worth billions of dollars in far-flung regions of the country will soon be impossible for American officials to safely visit and directly inspect.