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 …

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?

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 …

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 …

Hundreds Turn Out to Support Same-Sex Marriage in Vietnam  —  Hundreds of people gathered in the center of Hanoi Sunday morning to watch a staged wedding ceremony between two same-sex couples ahead of a planned parliamentary debate on the topic next month.  —  Under the heat of an autumn morning …

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.

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.

A model for Hillary Clinton 2016: Hillary Clinton 2000  —  The most urgent question Hillary Clinton would face if she runs for president again is whether she could avoid the blunders — the bitter staff rivalries going public, the poisonous relationship with the press, the presumption of inevitability …

Rubio vs. Comprehensive Immigration Reform  —  I'm not sure it has ever happened before that an architect of major legislation in the Senate has basically opposed its passage in the House.  But that's where Marco Rubio is.  Breitbart has more on this, getting a statement from Rubio's spokesman Alex Conant:

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.