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.

Here's how GOP Obamacare hypocrisy backfires  —  GOP base doesn't understand right wants to turn Medicare, Social Security and more into a very similar program  —  The smartest thing yet written about the botched rollout of the Affordable Care Act's federal exchange program is a post …

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 …

Obamacare Rate Shock and Premium Joy: Now It's Real  —  The conversation about Obamacare shifted a bit over the weekend.  Nobody has forgotten about the technical problems with healthcare.gov. But now critics are also focusing on something else: Reports of sharp premium increases that some individual consumers are facing.

Harry Reid Will Bring ENDA Up For Senate Vote  —  WASHINGTON — The Employment Non-Discrimination Act could come up for a vote in the Senate as early as next week, according to the office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).  —  ENDA would ban workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Marco Rubio: Time To Scale Back Immigration Reform  —  The most prominent conservative supporter of sweeping immigration reform is calling on Congress to dial back the effort and instead focus on making incremental changes, delivering a significant blow to the prospects of reform.

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 …

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 …

Banksy rips New York Times for rejected op-ed  —  It isn't news that's fit to print.  —  Elusive British graffiti artist Banksy took a swipe at the New York Times today for denying him a spot on the newspaper's coveted op-ed page, where he was planning to trash the new World Trade Center tower.

‘Uncomfortable truth’ in Matthew Shepard's death  —  Stephen Jimenez didn't set out to be the most dangerous journalist on earth.  —  Or, more to the point, the most dangerous gay journalist.  —  But Jimenez unearthed a story that few people wanted to hear.

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?

Embattled IQ Scholar Reemerges As National Review Writer  —  Jason Richwine, who parted ways with the Heritage Foundation over his research arguing Hispanics are intellectually inferior to whites, has quietly begun writing semi-regularly for the flagship conservative publication National Review.

I Did Not ‘Recant’ on Voter ID Laws  —  Richard A. Posner on judges, data, and consequences  —  A month or so ago, a new book of mine, called Reflections on Judging, was published by the Harvard University Press.  I have been a federal court of appeals judge since 1981 …

Right-wing Populism Could Hobble America for Decades  —  The tea party is going down.  Dysfunction is not.  —  In the Federalist Papers, James Madison promised that a large republic with a representative government would avoid the “instability, injustice and confusion” that had plagued many nations in Europe.

Obama Takes Friendly Fire  —  Incoming from Democrats:  —  “Dem Party is F****d.”  That was the subject line of an email sent to me Sunday by a senior Democratic consultant with strong ties to the White House and Capitol Hill.  The body of the email contained a link to this Los Angeles Times story about Obamacare “sticker shock:”

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.