memeorandum: Committee Learns Who's Paid for Obamacare: As of April 15, Only 67 Percent of Enrollees … (Energy & Commerce Committee)

1:45 PM ET, May 1, 2014

Top Items:

Jennifer Rubin / Washington Post:

The worst excuse ever: The Rhodes memo debacle — The White House damage control on the latest batch of Benghazi emails is not going well. The White House's belated release of the documents at the very least show it has been actively evading legitimate congressional requests for relevant information.

Discussion: CNN, Taylor Marsh, Fox News and Althouse

Michael D. Shear / New York Times:

Email Suggests White House Strategy on Benghazi — WASHINGTON — A newly released email shows that White House officials sought to shape the way Susan E. Rice, then the ambassador to the United Nations, discussed the Middle East chaos that was the context for the attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.

Discussion: JustOneMinute and NewsBusters

Katie Pavlich / Townhall.com:

Top Intel Chief Testifies: ‘We Should Have Sent Help For Americans in Benghazi’ — Testifying in front of a House Oversight Committee hearing Thursday on Capitol Hill, retired Air Force Brigadier General Robert Lovell said the military should have and could have done more to help Americans …

Discussion: Hot Air, Daily Kos and The Gateway Pundit

Yahoo! News:
When the White House hates your tweet

Discussion: Hot Air, more at Mediagazer »

Andrew C. McCarthy / National Review:
Obama's ‘Blame the Video’ Fraud Started in Cairo, Not Benghazi

Discussion: protein wisdom and The Gateway Pundit

Justin Sink / The Hill:
Can Obama get his groove back? — It's been more than a year …

Discussion: Weekly Standard, Fox News and Jammie Wearing Fools

Wall Street Journal:
New evidence that Ben Rhodes told Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton to blame the video.

Discussion: Power Line, Townhall.com, Betsy's Page, Mediaite, Outside the Beltway, The Daily Caller, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, Slate, The PJ Tatler and National Review

Catherine Thompson / Talking Points Memo:

Tom Coburn: I Don't Believe There Should Be A National Minimum Wage — Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) said Thursday that he doesn't believe there should be a national minimum wage. — Senate Republicans voted Wednesday to block debate on legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10.

Discussion: Hullabaloo, Liberaland, Patterico's Pontifications, Shakesville and Associated Press

The Hill:
Dems: Wage push just beginning

Discussion: Daily Kos and WJLA-TV

New York Times:
State-Sponsored Horror in Oklahoma

Discussion: Guardian, The Daily Caller, The Week, Tulsa World, The Dish, Democracy in America and Los Angeles Times

Dahlia Lithwick / Slate:
When the Death Penalty Turns Into Torture

Discussion: Washington Post, The Week, New York Times, The Baffler and The Dish

New York Times:
Oklahoma Vows Review of Botched Execution

Discussion: Philly.com, Mashable, Guardian, NPR, The New Republic and Liberaland

Sahil Kapur / Talking Points Memo:

Antonin Scalia's Blunder Is Unprecedented, Legal Experts Say — Justice Antonin Scalia's factual error in a dissenting opinion Tuesday has become the talk of the legal community as experts puzzle over the extraordinary nature of the Reagan-appointed justice's blunder, which the Supreme Court quietly corrected as of Wednesday morning.

Discussion: The Moderate Voice, NPR, Hit & Run, SCOTUSblog, ACS Blog, The Mahablog, DownWithTyranny!, Prairie Weather, Bloomberg View, Josh Blackman's Blog, New York Times, The Raw Story and Legal Planet

Energy & Commerce Committee:

Committee Learns Who's Paid for Obamacare: As of April 15, Only 67 Percent of Enrollees in Federal Marketplace Had Paid First Month's Premium — Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee to Hold Hearing NEXT WEEK with Insurance Companies to Discuss Detailed Enrollment Data

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, National Review, ACASignups.net, CBS News, The Gateway Pundit, Reuters, Hot Air, Vox, The PJ Tatler, Washington Examiner, The Dish, “The Lid” and Eric Cantor …

Jonathan Cohn / The New Republic:
Obamacare Is Getting the Benghazi Treatment, Courtesy of House Republicans

Discussion: NationalJournal.com, Hit & Run, Daily Kos and Washington Post

Stephanie Condon / CBS News:
Report: 67% of Obamacare enrollees have paid so far

Discussion: American Spectator, The Week and CBS DC

Allahpundit / Hot Air:
Uh oh: House committee claims only two-thirds of federal ObamaCare enrollees paid first premium by April 15

Discussion: ACASignups.net, VodkaPundit and Patterico's Pontifications

Globe and Mail:

Rob Ford takes leave as recent drug video emerges — A second video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking what has been described as crack cocaine by a self-professed drug dealer was secretly filmed in his sister's basement early Saturday morning. — The clip, which was viewed by two Globe and Mail reporters …

Discussion: CNN, Poynter, Toronto Sun, New York Times, CBC News, Talking Points Memo, Washington Post, The Daily Caller, RT, Mediaite, The Week and Business Insider

Royson James Toronto / Toronto Star:

Rob Ford is out of time and must resign: James — Toronto mayor's descent so long and dark it may be too late for redemption — Jennifer Gordon, whose back is to the camera, and friends spotted Mayor Rob Ford “stumbling” down the street near the Esplanade on St. Patrick's Day 2012.

Discussion: VodkaPundit, Boing Boing, Globe and Mail and Blazing Cat Fur

Snapchat:

Putting the Chat into Snapchat — Building Snapchat has taught us a lot about what makes conversation special. When we first started working on an application for sharing disappearing pictures, we had no idea how much we would learn. Our classmates were quick to point out that you could always take a screenshot.

Discussion: ThinkProgress, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat and Mashable

Ellis Hamburger / The Verge:
Real talk: the new Snapchat brilliantly mixes video and texting

Discussion: New York Times, Gigaom, PandoDaily, Globe and Mail, The Week and Business Insider

Politico:

What Is Hillary Clinton Afraid Of? — Over the 25 years Hillary Clinton has spent in the national spotlight, she's been smeared and stereotyped, the subject of dozens of over-hyped or downright fictional stories and books alleging, among other things, that she is a lesbian …

Discussion: Associated Press, The Week, NewsBusters and National Review

Politico:
The White House Beat, Uncovered

Discussion: The Week, Fox News and The Huffington Post

James Taranto / Wall Street Journal:

If Data Were a Journalist — He'd work for Ezra Klein. — “Vox.com joins a crowded field of data-driven news sites,” USA Today reported earlier this month on Ezra Klein's new venture. Maybe “Data” should have been capitalized. — A pair of articles the site published yesterday …

Discussion: The Dish and Althouse

Eleanor Clift / The Daily Beast:

Meet Mary Burke, the Woman Who Could Beat Scott Walker — She's a political novice—and that may be what it takes to knock off Wisconsin's governor, of whose jobs plan she says: 'I've seen eighth-graders' term papers that are more thoughtful.' — Republicans call her “Millionaire Mary,” …

Discussion: Althouse, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion and Hot Air

Ben Smith / BuzzFeed:

Benjamin Netanyahu Has Had Enough Of Your Selfies — “You are slaves.” — View Entire List ›

Discussion: Guardian, Mediaite and Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion

Lizette Alvarez / New York Times:

Florida Set to Offer In-State Tuition to Children Brought to U.S. Illegally — MIAMI — After weeks of hand-wringing in the State Legislature and last-minute attempts by Senate leaders to scuttle the effort, Florida seems poised to make students who were brought to the United States illegally …

Discussion: Outside the Beltway

Marlow Stern / The Daily Beast:

John Oliver on ‘Last Week Tonight,’ Turning Down CBS, and ‘Nauseating’ American Politics — The newly minted host of HBO's ‘Last Week Tonight with John Oliver’ sat down to discuss his new gig, the strange state of U.S. politics, and more over coffee. — “I'm still getting used to this whole interview thing,” says John Oliver.

Discussion: Mediaite and Yahoo! News

Catherine Thompson / Talking Points Memo:

Fox News Brands Scientific American Editor A ‘Coward’ (VIDEO) — A Scientific American editor must have struck a nerve over at Fox News this week when he tweeted about having a “Fox & Friends” producer shoot down his idea to talk about the impacts of climate change on the show.

Discussion: The Raw Story, Scientific American …, The Moderate Voice and The Huffington Post

A.B. Stoddard / The Hill:

Dems on thin ice for 2014 — Amid a torrent of fresh and frightening polling, Democrats are clinging to some comforting silver linings: flush war chests, a few strong individual polls, a robust gender gap. But it will be months before we know if they are kittens balancing on branches or cats with nine lives.