This is your Moment of Clarity #242: This is the perfect video for anyone who thinks they're behind the NSA spying program news. Give it a chance. This video is for Obama lovers and haters.

Keep fighting,

Lee

In this week's address, President Obama says that the United States Senate will soon take action to fix our broken immigration system with a commonsense bill, and urges lawmakers to act quickly to pass this bill so that we can continue to live up to our traditions as a nation of laws, and also a nation of immigrants.

"See, we define ourselves as a nation of immigrants. The promise we find in those who come from every corner of the globe has always been one of our greatest strengths. It’s kept our workforce vibrant and dynamic. It’s kept our businesses on the cutting edge. And it’s helped build the greatest economic engine the world has ever known."

"But for years, our out-of-date immigration system has actually harmed our economy and threatened our security."

Obama pointed to improvements made to the system over the past four years, beefed-up border security, better use of technology, more effective deportation of criminals and focusing on the cause of what he called the "Dreamers," the young people brought here as children. But more comprehensive action is desperately needed. That's why, he said, the proposed legislation next week is so necessary, even if imperfect.

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The Young Turks: Cenk, Ben Mankiewicz and Brett Erlich discuss troubling reports that the Department of Justice tapped Fox News reporter James Rosen’s phone line – and his parents’. Cenk says the journalist wiretapping is the only actual scandal going on right now (as opposed to the IRS audits and Benghazi). But because Fox News flips out over everything, it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff on the rare occasion that they’re right about something.

“Part of the problem is that Fox News cries wolf so much that once they have a legitimate argument… you’ve lost a little credibility,” Cenk says.

I'm not sure when, or if, Fox News ever had a legitimate argument -- or credibility -- but they do cry wolf rather often.

The Obama administration acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that four American citizens have been killed in drone strikes since 2009 in Pakistan and Yemen. The disclosure, in a letter from Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, comes on the eve of a major national security speech by President Barack Obama.

Al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric, was killed in a drone strike in September 2011 in Yemen. Holder said three other Americans were killed by drones in counterterrorism operations since 2009 but were not targeted.

The three are Samir Khan, who was killed in the same drone strike as al-Awlaki; al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, who also was killed in Yemen two weeks later; and Jude Kennan Mohammed, who was killed in a drone strike in Pakistan.

WaPo:

Holder said that only Anwar al-Awlaki was “specifically targeted.” Khan was known to have been killed by the strike that targeted Awlaki, while the 16-year-old was killed in what senior administration officials described as a “mistake,” when he was in the company of another targeted individual shortly after his father’s death.

Mohammad was indicted in 2009 by a federal grand jury in North Carolina, where he had lived near Raleigh. The indictment said he was believed to have left the United States for Pakistan in 2008 to “engage in violent jihad.”
...

Reached in North Carolina Wednesday, Mohammad’s mother, Elena Mohammad, said she had been aware for some time that her son had been killed in a drone strike, but was told by people in Pakistan, not by U.S. authorities. Her ex-husband is Pakistani.

Mohammad said she had no details on when or where her son was killed. She also said she had no interest in discussing her son’s past.

“I dealt with that and I don’t have to deal with it anymore because it’s already over with,” she said in the phone interview. “So whatever transpired I don’t want it back in my life anymore. It’s gone. There are no questions. I don’t have to hear any authorities; the FBI has finished coming to my house. It’s over. That’s it.”

During Obama's scheduled counterterrorism policy speech on Thursday, he will discuss his belief that it's in the best interests of the nation to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

It is not clear whether or not the President will discuss the transfer of detainees, or the repatriation of those cleared for release during Thursday's speech.

Holder said in his letter, that Obama “has made clear his commitment to providing Congress and the American people with as much information as possible about our sensitive counterterrorism operations.”

You can read Holder's letter here.

Carmen is a 23 year-old fighting to keep her family's home. Yesterday she was electrocuted by a taser at the Department of Justice while peacefully protesting with Occupy Our Homes and the Home Defenders League for her rights as a homeowner.

Call President Obama at (202) 456-1111 and tell him to arrest bankers, not homeowners.

Occupiers, allies and community members from across the country came together in front of the DOJ to demand that Attorney General Eric Holder arrest the bankers responsible for upending the international economy through the housing crisis.

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Former FBI agent Jack Cloonan, psychiatrist Dr. Janet Taylor, and Yahoo! News senior editor Beth Fouhy join “Say Anything!” host Joy Behar to reflect on the aftermath of the bombing at the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon.

“We should be concerned because we don’t know if this is the beginning of a new front,” Cloonan says. “We’re 10 years out from 9/11. There’s been 50-odd attempts to bomb the United States. Some would say almost 60. This is the first one that happened. That means the zero-sum game is over. We’re starting a new phase. What went wrong here?”

“We are vulnerable. No matter what we do, this is a war of attrition, and who’s going to blink first and who’s going to blink most often,” Cloonan continues.

Press Conference: Release of Task Force Report on Detainee Treatment: The Constitution Project's Task Force on Detainee Treatment is an independent, bipartisan, blue-ribbon panel charged with examining the federal government's policies and actions related to the capture, detention and treatment of suspected terrorists during the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations.

The U.S. tortured people. A nonpartisan, 577-page report on the United States’ interrogation program concludes that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture,” and that top officials were responsible for it. The 11-member panel was organized by the Constitution Project and was led by two former members of Congress: a Republican, Asa Hutchinson, and a Democrat, James Jones. The report confirms that waterboarding was more widespread, and was practiced against Libyan militants as well as Al Qaeda prisoners. Torture also damaged the U.S.’s standing in the world and risked the safety of U.S. troops. “As long as the debate continues, so too does the possibility that the United States could again engage in torture,” says the report.

NYT:

“I had not recognized the depths of torture in some cases,” Mr. Jones said. “We lost our compass.”

While the Constitution Project report covers mainly the Bush years, it is critical of some Obama administration policies, especially what it calls excessive secrecy. It says that keeping the details of rendition and torture from the public “cannot continue to be justified on the basis of national security” and urges the administration to stop citing state secrets to block lawsuits by former detainees.

The report calls for the revision of the Army Field Manual on interrogation to eliminate Appendix M, which it says would permit an interrogation for 40 consecutive hours, and to restore an explicit ban on stress positions and sleep manipulation.

The core of the report, however, may be an appendix: a detailed 22-page legal and historical analysis that explains why the task force concluded that what the United States did was torture. It offers dozens of legal cases in which similar treatment was prosecuted in the United States or denounced as torture by American officials when used by other countries.

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In his weekly address, President Obama tells the American people that a series of harmful budget cuts—called the sequester—have taken effect because Congress failed to act. Because Republicans in Congress refused to compromise to close tax loopholes for the wealthiest Americans, hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose their jobs or see their paycheck reduced, and middle class families will be hurt. Congress must join the President now to replace these cuts with a balanced approach that reduces our deficit while also making smart investments in areas that help our economy grow.

Full transcript of the President's remarks below the fold...

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Yes, FSM help us, the 2012 Presidential campaign has returned. Back from his “rollercoaster” election campaign, Mitt Romney has emerged from hiding to criticize President Obama’s handling of the sequester.

In his first public comments since Election Day, Romney slammed Obama for “berating Republicans” instead of leading the country, adding that the president’s habit of “blaming and pointing” has contributed to Congress’s inability to reach a deal. “That causes the Republicans to retrench and to put up a wall and to fight back,” he told Fox News’s Chris Wallace.

In a previously released clip, Romney compared the campaign to a roller coaster.

“It’s different. But it’s like, you know, riding on a roller coaster. We were on a roller coaster, exciting and thrilling, ups and downs. But the ride ends. And then you get off. And it’s not like, oh, can’t we be on a roller coaster the rest of our life? It’s like, no, the ride’s over,” Romney said, according to an excerpt provided by Fox News. This rather gives new meaning to that post-election trip to Disneyland.

Meanwhile, poor Not-A-First-Lady Ann Romney reflected on being a “nobody” in her post-election life.

“You know, it’s interesting; in our church, we’re used to serving and you know, you can be in a very high position, but you recognize you’re serving. And now all of a sudden, you’re released and you’re nobody,” she said. “And we’re used to that. It’s like we came and stepped forward to serve. And you know, the other part of it was an amazing thing, and it was really quite a lot of energy and a lot of passion and a lot of — a lot of people around us and all of a sudden, it was nothing.

In a preview, Wallace told Politico's Patrick Gavin that Ann feels the pain of the loss.

"I'd say he is in a better place than she is," Wallace said, reflecting on the interview. "Not to say she’s bitter — and she enjoys her life. Look, they live on the beach, north of San Diego and a bunch of their grandkids are around. You know, they’ve got a pretty great life. But I think she feels the pain and the "what-ifs" and the hurt more than he does. And that comes through in the interview. There’s a lot of emotion that comes through in the interview, and she’s more open about it — the "what might have been."

The Fox News host said that Romney "Obviously thinks he made some mistakes," but is "very defensive and very supportive of his campaign." He also said Romney pointed to a liberal media bias and a "long and expensive" primary battle as factors in the loss, but described the former candidate as "at ease" and "serene about it."

The full interview airs on Fox News Sunday this weekend.