memeorandum: Academy makes ‘God’ optional in cadets' oath (Stephen Losey/Air Force Times)

10:50 PM ET, October 26, 2013

Top Items:

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

Reuters:

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

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

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

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

Jennifer Jacobs / Des Moines Register:

In Iowa, tea party defender Ted Cruz says he knows how to unite the GOP — Conservative purist Ted Cruz addressed the concerns of any Iowa Republicans who reject him as too rigid, arguing he knows exactly how to unify the GOP and how to turn the country around. — The answer: “Restore historic economic growth,” he said.

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, The Hill, neo-neocon, Associated Press, The Raw Story, Taegan Goddard's …, The Reaction and Red Alert Politics

Jonathan Weisman / New York Times:

After Year of Working Around Federal Cuts, Agencies Face Fewer Options — WASHINGTON — In the weeks that led to the huge across-the-board cuts to federal spending early this year, Obama administration officials warned of dire consequences for the Justice Department: F.B.I. agents dropped …

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: Weasel Zippers

Stephen Losey / Air Force Times:

Academy makes ‘God’ optional in cadets' oath — The Air Force Academy on Friday announced that it will now be optional for cadets to recite “so help me God” at the end of its honor oath. — The academy made the change in response to a complaint from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation …

Discussion: NO QUARTER USA NET, Business Insider and WJLA-TV

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: Gizmodo and Mediaite

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