According to The Washington Post, the Department of Justice examined Fox News reporter James Rosen’s personal emails, phone records, and visits to the State Department in order to investigate a leak of classified information. Rosen came to the attention of the DOJ after writing an article about CIA analysis of how North Korea might respond to sanctions. The DOJ traced the leak back to State Department worker Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, who now faces charges for leaking intel. Unlike the AP investigation, however, it was thought that the reporter may also face charges as a “co-conspirator.” However, statements made Tuesday by White House spokesman Jay Carney indicate that the Fox News reporter is likely off the hook.

WaPo:

The Kim case began in June 2009, when Rosen reported that U.S. intelligence officials were warning that North Korea was likely to respond to United Nations sanctions with more nuclear tests. The CIA had learned the information, Rosen wrote, from sources inside North Korea.

The story was published online the same day that a top-secret report was made available to a small circle within the intelligence community — including Kim, who at the time was a State Department arms expert with security clearance.

FBI investigators used the security-badge data, phone records and e-mail exchanges to build a case that Kim shared the report with Rosen soon after receiving it, court records show.

In the documents, FBI agent Reginald Reyes described in detail how Kim and Rosen moved in and out of the State Department headquarters at 2201 C St. NW a few hours before the story was published on June 11, 2009.

“Mr. Kim departed DoS at or around 12:02 p.m. followed shortly thereafter by the reporter at or around 12:03 p.m.,” Reyes wrote. Next, the agent said, “Mr. Kim returned to DoS at or around 12:26 p.m. followed shortly thereafter by the reporter at or around 12:30 p.m.”

The activity, Reyes wrote in an affidavit, suggested a “face-to-face” meeting between the two men. “Within a few hours after those nearly simultaneous exits and entries at DoS, the June 2009 article was published on the Internet,” he wrote.

Rosen and Kim used coded signals in emails to communicate, “One asterisk means to contact them, or that previously suggested plans for communication are to proceed as agreed; two asterisks means the opposite.”

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Amid a deluge of negative news, the Obama administration seems bent on convincing the media and public that it really is still open and transparent. On Wednesday afternoon, the White House released more than 100 pages of emails between top administration officials showing that the CIA drafted and then redrafted the talking points used to describe what, exactly, happened during the attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi last September. The House Intelligence Committee requested the talking points to use in interviews with the press.

CNN:

The White House released more than 100 pages of e-mails on Wednesday in a bid to quell critics who say President Barack Obama and his aides played politics with national security following the deadly terror attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.

The e-mails detail the complex back and forth between the CIA, State Department, and the White House in developing unclassified talking points that were used to underpin a controversial and slow-to-evolve explanation of events last September 11.

You can read all the e-mails here.

But of course, the emails aren't enough for guess who?

Rep. Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee which is investigating the matter, told CNN's "Situtation Room" that his staff wants to digest the e-mails. He stressed that they were a selected set of documents as released and the committee is still seeking a range of other information.

I've heard that if you stand facing a mirror after midnight in a dark room and repeat "Benghazi!" three times...Darrell Issa, John Boehner, Dick Cheney and Sean Hannity will appear in your mirror. I advise against trying this at home.

Via Markos, Republican Congressman Darrell Issa, chairman of the GOP's Benghazi Oversight Committee, gives an articulate explanation [at 0:59] on why this is the worst scandal ever in American history:

"An act of terror is different than a terrorist attack."

[Blink*Blink]

Oh yeah, it all makes sense now.

But, Lord love a duck, there's more.

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In a January 12, 2012, speech, Thomas J. Donohue, President of the U.S Chamber of Commerce, said: "Labor unions and the business community alike are urging President Obama to act in the best interests of our national security and our workers and approve the pipeline. We can put 20,000 Americans to work right away and up to 250,000 over the life of the project."

Donahue took those pie-in-the-sky job predictions even further, "In fact, by knocking down the barriers, we can unlock up to $250 billion in private capital for infrastructure. Leverage this with public investments, and we could create 1.9 million jobs over 10 years."

With so many unemployed and under-employed in the U.S., it's no wonder there is such a bitter divide between environmentalists and those who support the KXL pipeline, 250k to 1.9 million new jobs is quite a carrot to dangle. But it's not true, according to the State Department.

Bloomberg News reports:

TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL oil pipeline, heralded by supporters as a major job creator, will add few permanent positions once the $7 billion project is built.

The number of people needed to operate and maintain the 1,661-mile (2,673-kilometer) pipeline may be as few as 20, according to the U.S. State Department, or as many as a few hundred, according to TransCanada.

“I don’t see a big jobs impact,” Stephen Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, said in an interview. “It gets the oil into refineries that already exist. It’s like replacing a bridge on the highway.”

Numbers for temporary construction jobs along the pipeway, according to State Department, estimates are anticipated to be between 5,000 and 6,000. Note that those are temporary positions.

Of the 800,000 tons of 36-inch carbon steel pipe needed for pipeline construction, it's not altogether clear how much will be produced by U.S. steel mills, prompting Congressional Democrats led by Representative Henry Waxman, of California, to ask TransCanada Chief Executive Officer Russ Girling to disclose where steel for the project will be manufactured.

“TransCanada is entitled to decide where to purchase its materials,” Waxman’s Feb. 10 letter said. “However, providing misleading information to Congress in order to obtain a legislative earmark for the approval of its pipeline would be clearly improper.”

As few as twenty jobs. Why would anyone risk our precious land, water and air for twenty jobs with a dirty oil company?

Before you begin reading, click to start the above video. It's from Dec. 13 at Occupy Portland as the Portland police move in to evict the occupy protestesters. Now is it irony, or are some people living in an alternate reality? Check out the following statement from the State Department:

Via:

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that the United States supported the right to peaceful protest in Russia as it does “anywhere in the world.”

“We expect that those demonstrations will remain peaceful on behalf of all parties, whether they’re the demonstrators or whether they are those keeping social order,” she said.

“So our expectation is that if there are protests, that they will be peaceful and that they will be allowed to proceed peacefully,” Nuland said.

I read that and I see these images:

And I wonder what does the word "support" mean in that statement:

Does "anywhere in the world" mean anywhere but here?

The word "peaceful" is in that statement, too. I've yet to see a single Occupy eviction that remained peaceful. There are even simply Occupy marches that aren't allowed to proceed without violent intervention by police.

I've seen how we brought "peace" to Iraq and to Afghanistan and more, and I've seen how we spread "Democracy."

The video of the brutal assault on Occupy Portland is real, as are the photographs above. The words in that statement are just that, words. Words can be difficult to take at face value and instead fall flat, unless just sometimes you actually get to see them in action.

Words will also generally fall flat when directed elsewhere if you don't live them at "home." You know, just sayin'.