The Secret Service is following up on recent comments by right wing radio host Pete Santilli, who claimed to want to shoot former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the vagina and see President Obama tried and shot for treason.

"We are aware of Mr. Sanjavascript:void(0);tilli's comments and will take the appropriate follow up action," Edwin M. Donovan, a Secret Service spokesperson, told TPM on Monday. "He certainly has a right to free speech, but the Secret Service has a right and an obligation to determine what a person's intent is when making comments like this."

He made the threatening comments the week before last on his eponymous Internet based radio program. Santilli is a fringe figure who has made threatening comments on his program in the past. But he's gained some quasi-mainstream attention recently with guests like Ted Nugent and Gun Owners of America director Larry Pratt.

'Miss Hillary Clinton needs to be convicted, she needs to be tried, convicted and shot in the vagina," he said. "I wanna pull the trigger. That 'C U Next Tuesday' has killed human beings that are in our ranks of our service. I want to remind you that in Benghazi, Miss Hillary 'the fricken' biggest vagina on the face of the planet' told troops to stand down and to not go in and interfere with the operation that they set up because they're moving arms; Barack Obama is moving drugs through the CIA out of Afghanistan and Barack Obama needs to be tried, convicted, and shot for crimes against the United States of America."

The website Hypervocal has posted the audio.

A recent string of scandals have threatened to beset President Barack Obama's second term, but the latest CNN/ORC International poll released Sunday found that he has yet to pay a price in his approval rating for them.

In fact, Obama's approval rating of 53 percent among American adults in the poll amounts to a 2-point bump since the previous CNN/ORC poll a month ago. Forty-five percent said they disapprove of Obama's job performance, down two points since last month. Two months ago, the CNN/ORC poll showed Obama with an upside-down approval rating: 47 percent said they approved of the President while half said they disapproved.

But the latest poll also indicated the public is taking the President's problems seriously. A huge majority -- 71 percent -- said the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups was "unacceptable" and 52 percent said the same of the Justice Department's seizure of Associated Press phone records. Fifty-three percent said they are dissatisfied with the way the Obama administration has handled last year's deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya. More than half of Americans said that Republicans are reacting appropriately to both the IRS scandal and the Benghazi investigation.

Yet the poll showed that Americans are still willing to give the White House the benefit of the doubt. Sixty-one percent said that Obama's public comments about the IRS have been "mostly" or "completely" true and only 37 percent believe that the White House ordered agency officials to target conservative groups. Half of Americans believe that the inaccurate talking points used after the attack in Benghazi "reflected what the Obama administration believed at the time had occurred based on the unclassified information available."

The PollTracker Average shows Obama's job approval rating slightly above 50 percent, as it has been for much of the stretch following last year's election.

Sources with knowledge of key congressional briefings earlier this year on administration emails regarding the Sept 11, 2012 Benghazi attack tell TPM that those in attendance were provided clear information that the White House remained neutral in adjudicating a dispute between the State Department and the CIA over talking points at the center of a months-long controversy.

In walking members and their staffs through the internal emails, the administration provided extensive explanations of how the talking points evolved, sources in attendance tell TPM. The extent of the information provided in the classified briefings calls into further question how a summary of the emails that was leaked to ABC News overstated the White House's role in crafting them. An intelligence official who participated in the briefings and spoke to TPM says that the discrenpacy between the emails he briefed Congress about and the ABC News report "speak for itself."

The semi-dormant controversy over the Obama administration's conduct during and after the attack on a U.S. outpost in Benghazi re-erupted last week when ABC News' Jonathan Karl published a report that lent credence to GOP suspicions that the White House was deeply involved in preparing official talking points about the attack to tamp down the story for political reasons.

The ABC report was based on notes taken by a still-unnamed source, presumably a Republican, in attendance at one of two briefings the administration held for members and senior staffers of the Senate and House intelligence committees and top leadership offices in February and March of this year. The ABC report contained a great deal of the information the White House would ultimately reveal itself this week when it released all of the inter- and intra-agency email communication that ultimately resulted in the talking points Susan Rice used in a now-infamous series of appearances on network news shows on the Sunday after the attack.

But it got one big part about the White House's role wrong:

In an email dated 9/14/12 at 9:34 p.m. -- three days after the attack and two days before Ambassador Rice appeared on the Sunday shows -- Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes wrote an email saying the State Department's concerns needed to be addressed. "We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don't want to undermine the FBI investigation. We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting."

It turns out that's not what the email said. To quiet the growing furor over the idea that the White House had thumbed the scale on the State Department's behalf, a government official subsequently leaked to CNN the full text of Rhodes' message, which was assiduously neutral about each relevant agency's concerns.

But discussions with several people in attendance at or with knowledge of the two congressional briefings suggest that members and staffers were left with the opposite impression -- that the White House had remained neutral in the dispute between the State Department and the CIA -- and that after a thorough run-through, they were given ample time to take notes not just about the briefing itself, but in theory to transcribe key emails verbatim.

"When I say they were allowed to have the documents for as long as they wanted, they were allowed to take notes for as long as they wanted as well," the intelligence official said.

The discrepancy between the documents ABC was provided and the official records has led White House officials, congressional aides, and outside observers to the conclusion that a GOP member or staffer falsified notes or tendentiously interpreted administration emails -- and then leaked them -- to create the impression that the White House had sided with the State Department in an intra-agency dispute to protect President Obama from political blowback.

"I got a lot of questions probing in a lot areas," the intelligence official said. "Truthfully I cannot recall whether I specifically got any questions asking about the White House. All the questions I got were not sort of tendentious questions but they were asking facts, to understand what went on."

After those briefings, the Benghazi controversy quieted down for several weeks -- a tellingly long silence given how damning the emails supposedly were -- until ABC's report, including its characterization of the White House's involvement, exploded in the press late last week. Karl, who downplayed the discrepancies between the summaries he relied on and the actual emails, was not immediately available for comment for this story.

"I wouldn't go into what the members said in the meeting," the intelligence official said. "The relationship between what the documents show and what the report said sort of speak for itself."

A congressional source who attended one of the two meetings had a similar recollection.

"I don't recall a single member asking a single question or making a single statement suggesting the White House played anything other than an appropriate role in resolving the disagreement over the talking points," the source said.

On top of that, the source added that the CIA had acknowledged on other occasions making all of the major changes to the talking points itself, irrespective of the State Department's concerns.

"The CIA itself and then the ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] who walked us through the emails all made clear that every one of the changes with regard to the involvement the naming of al Qaeda and Ansar al Sharia were made by the CIA," the source added. "Petraeus and Morell were saying that last year.... They were extremely forthcoming about that from the beginning. That piece of knowledge was repeated so many times in so many different briefings it would be impossible for me to believe that anybody left with the impression that anyone other than the CIA made the changes."

This source draws a connection between the notes quoted in the ABC report, and an April report from House Republicans which attributes the changes to the State Department.

"The House Republican report so distorted its coverage of the talking points changes. ... I see no reason to believe it wouldn't be the same thing with regard to the Ben Rhodes email."

A senior House Republican aide with knowledge of the briefing but who denies being ABC's source still largely backs the GOP characterization of the emails, and says any mischaracterizations were unintentional, and the result of poor communication.

"The idea anyone was nefariously putting words in people's mouths just isn't based in reality," the aide emailed. "This ALL goes back to a disconnect between quoting summaries vs quoting verbatims. And, again, ABC acknowledges they weren't clear enough in their first story about what they were told they had been given."

That explanation doesn't cut it for Democrats.

"I think they thought that this stuff would never be declassified or something," said one House source with knowledge of the briefing. "Some of them could've taken really bad notes, but to me this looks more intentional."

To the congressional source in attendance, it's all part of the GOP obsession with Benghazi. "I know for a fact that some of the Republican critics -- they are true believers. .... They may not have found the smoking gun yet that convinces everyone else there was a coverup, but there's no question in their mind that it's there somewhere, evidence notwithstanding."

Tom Sullivan said he was just trying to show someone a few photos of his son.

Alex Sullivan, 27, was one of the young men killed last year in the Aurora, Colo. movie theater shooting, and his father wanted a high-ranking Republican lawmaker to know what gun violence had taken away from him.

So this week, Tom Sullivan went to a forum being held by Denver Post. State Senate Minority Leader Bill Cadman was there answering questions about the recent legislative session in which several gun control measures were debated and passed.

Sullivan was allowed to ask the last question of the forum, and he confronted Cadman about the way a number of legislators conducted themselves during the session. Cadman's defensive response was caught on video and later posted online. But Sullivan told TPM on Friday there was an even more uncomfortable interaction between the two men after the event.

Sullivan said he approached Cadman to give him a collage with pictures of Alex.

"I walked right up to him, and I handed him one of the pictures, and I said, 'This is a picture of my son,'" Sullivan recounted. "He looked me right in the eyes and he said angrily to me, 'I know what he looks like,' and he walked away."

Cadman's chief of staff, Jesse Mallory, told TPM he was not there to witness the exchange and that the minority leader was unavailable to comment on Friday afternoon.

The post-forum encounter was the unseen finale of a confrontation that had begun earlier at the Wednesday forum in front of an audience of spectators and journalists. His first part captured on video, and has been pointed to by gun control advocates as a sign of how Republicans see the issue. Sullivan rambled a little, and never actually got a question out. But he wanted to let the legislative big know what was on his mind.

"Gentlemen, this is my first time down at the--up in the Gallery, to watch you guys work," Sullivan said. "And I have to tell you, I was kind of appalled at with what, with some of the things that I saw down there, the levity in which our elected officials conduct themselves down on the floor."

Sullivan went on to criticize Cadman for comments made earlier at the forum, accusing Democrats of overreaching in plans to expand background checks for gun purchases. To prove his point, Cadman had outlined two hypothetical situations where well-meaning individuals would find themselves in violation of requirements on firearms transfers: Boy Scouts who carry weapons owned by family members on group outings, and Cadman's family members who have him store their weapons on periodic vacations to Canada.

"I sat up there and listened to the stories about, you know the fictitious stories about Boy Scouts, and Canadian missionaries, moving around," Sullivan said at the event.

Cadman cut him off.

"You know what, he's trying to accuse me of lying, I think we're done," he said. "It's people, and constitutional rights, over an elite government elected and run by a very progressive-progressive special interest group, that's not even from Colorado. So did you have a question? Or do you just want to continue to throw insults at us?"

Sullivan continued and revealed he was the father of a victim of the Aurora shooting. Upon hearing this, Cadman seemingly began to listen attentively and take notes as Sullivan asked him to "imagine what that was like, having to go around to the hospitals here in town, looking for my son, and then finding out that he was lying in that theater, dead from a single gunshot wound to his heart."

"What I will tell you sir is that my son was murdered in the Aurora theater by a man who had bought a 100-round drum and murdered my son," Sullivan said.

While he was making the emotional speech, Sullivan later told TPM, Cadman appeared to only be pretending to take notes.

"When I told him who I was, then all of a sudden, he opened up his notebook again. But while I was talking to him, he wasn't taking notes, he was doodling," Sullivan said. "It was right in front of me."

Sullivan said he couldn't make out what Cadman was drawing, but he is certain the lawmaker was not writing. Cadman's chief of staff disputed the accusation, however, and said the senator was "absolutely" taking notes.

After Sullivan finished speaking, the event concluded.

Though he was dismissed by Cadman after the event, Sullivan said he was "not upset" about the encounter.

"I'm not looking for a free pass from anybody. I don't want anybody's sympathy, or anybody's pity, or anything like that," said Sullivan. "If that's how he feels, then that's how he feels. That's the way it is. ... I'm not upset, now we know. I mean, I'm trying to figure out where these people stand on these issues."

Watch the video of the initial interaction between Sullivan and Cadman at the forum:

In the face of a fresh attack on Friday, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) continued to imply that he agrees with those who support expanding background checks for gun purchases despite voting against a measure last month that would have done just that.

Flake was hit with the latest ad unveiled by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's pro-gun control group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, that featured the mother of a young man killed in last year's movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colo. The ad criticized Flake for breaking a promise he made to the mother to support expanded background checks.

Flake's office responded Friday morning with an email to TPM. Spokeswoman Genevieve Rozansky disputed the ad, and pointed to Flake's vote in favor of a piece of legislation that was supported by the nation's largest gun lobby, the National Rifle Association, and sponsored by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA).

"Contrary to the ad, Senator Flake did vote to strengthen background checks," Rozansky said in the email. "Senator Flake believes that the Grassley Amendment is a proposal that can pass both the Senate and the House and will greatly improve and strengthen our background check system."

The tactic has been repeated by conservative senators who voted against a popular measure hatched by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Pat Toomey (R-PA). Their proposal would have expanded background checks for purchases made at gun shows or online. The Grassley legislation, meanwhile, would have done nothing to expand the instances where background checks would apply. Instead, it would have set aside money to add mental health data to the national background check system, and it would have restored gun rights for those who have been in a psychiatric hospital for observation or committed themselves voluntarily and were subsequently deemed recovered.

Flake and his office have used the tactic in the past after a high-profile poll showed that the senator's approval numbers nose-dived because he voted against the Manchin-Toomey proposal.

The latest ad from Mayors Against Illegal Guns was designed to seize on those sliding poll numbers by portraying Flake as having deceived a grieving mother.

In the ad, Caren Teves, an Arizonan who, according to Mayors Against Illegal Guns, voted for Flake in 2012, held a letter she received from Flake earlier this year. She got the response after writing to ask him to support legislation to expand background checks.

"My son Alex was killed in Aurora, Colo.," Teves said in the ad. "We wrote Sen. Flake, urging him to support background checks. Sen. Flake wrote, 'I am truly sorry for your deep loss, strengthening background checks is something we agree on.' One month later, Sen. Flake voted against strengthening background checks. The issue isn't just background checks, it's keeping your promise."

The commercial will begin airing Friday in the Phoenix and Tucson media markets and it will run through May 30. Mayors Against Illegal Guns also ran another ad last month in Arizona, attacking Flake for his position on background checks.

Watch the commercial, which is entitled "My Son," below.

In the Massachusetts Senate race, Republican nominee Gabriel Gomez is reacting strongly to a TV ad launched Thursday by Democrat Ed Markey criticizing him for opposing a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, which the ad noted were used to carry out the Newtown, Conn. shootings.

"Gomez is against banning assault weapons," a narrator in the ad says. "And Gomez is against banning high-capacity magazines, like the ones used in the Newtown school shooting." The narrator continues: "The more you know, the clearer the choice."

On Friday, Gomez accused the longtime Democratic congressman of blaming him for the Newtown massacre, which killed 20 children and six adults and sparked efforts in Congress to beef up gun laws -- which have so far fallen flat.

"[I]n his most recent TV ad, Markey blames me for the horrific Newtown shooting," Gomez said in a statement Friday. "I guess after 37 years in Congress you lose your sense of decency. Exploiting a tragedy for political gain is sick."

National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesman Brad Dayspring also lashed out at Markey, saying he's "blaming [Gomez] for horrific murders in Newtown" and calling the ad "disgusting, deplorable and desperate."

The Markey campaign dismissed Gomez and the NRSC's pushback as "feigned outrage."

"If Gabriel Gomez considers it 'negative' to highlight his own opposition to banning deadly assault weapons and limiting high-capacity ammunition magazines, then maybe he should rethink his positions, which are out of step with Massachusetts families," Markey spokesman Andrew Zucker told TPM in an email Friday. "Unlike Gabriel Gomez, who says, 'I'm not Wayne LaPierre, he can do what he wants,' Ed Markey has stood up to the gun lobby and will fight for tougher gun laws in the Senate."

Although the candidates differ on whether to ban assault weapons and high-capacity clips, Gomez and Markey both support legislation by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) to extend mandatory background checks to firearm sales at gun shows and on the Internet -- a fact that Gomez pointed out in his statement.

Markey led Gomez by 7 points in a survey by the Democratic-affiliated Public Policy Polling released Thursday. The special election is on June 25.

An effort to pass new gun laws went up in flames last month in the U.S. Senate, and, according to a poll done for a pair of Libertarian groups, so did the public's desire for the Senate to take up the issue.

A majority, 62 percent, of Americans said that they want senators to move on to other issues, according to the latest Reason-Rupe poll released on Friday. Only 33 percent said they want the Senate to take up gun legislation again. The poll was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International.

"As you may know, the U.S. Senate recently voted down gun control legislation," the question said. "Do you think the Senate should debate and vote on gun control legislation again or should the Senate move on to other issues?"

It may be the latest sign that the push for new gun laws is fading five months after the massacre in Newtown, Conn. A survey released earlier this week by Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling found that support for expanded background checks on gun buyers remained strong, but had still dipped significantly.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), one of the authors of a background checks measure that was voted down by 45 senators, expressed optimism last month that a gun bill could still ultimately pass.

"I truly believe that if we have time to sell the bill and if people will read the bill" it can pass, Manchin said.

Republicans in the Ohio Legislature are pushing a plan that could cost the state's public universities millions of dollars if they provide students with documents to help them register to vote. Backers of the bill describe it as intended to resolve discrepancies between residency requirements for tuition and voter registration, while Democrats and other opponents argue it is a blatant attempt at voter suppression in a crucial swing state.

"What the bill would do is penalize public universities for providing their students with the documents they need to vote," Daniel Tokaji, a professor and election law expert at Ohio State University told TPM. "It's a transparent effort at vote suppression -- about the most blatant and shameful we've seen in this state, which is saying quite a lot."

The legislation is a provision in the state budget that was backed by the Republican majority in the Ohio House of Representatives. It is now headed to the Ohio Senate, which also has a GOP majority.

Currently, Ohio requires voters to be "a resident of Ohio for at least 30 days
immediately before the election in which you want to vote" and to provide photo identification, a current utility bill, a bank statement, current paycheck, current government check, or "an original or copy of a current other government document, other than a voter registration acknowledgement notification mailed by the board of elections, that shows the voter's name and current address." Students who live in dormitories and do not have state identification or a job or bank account in Ohio might not be able to meet this requirement even if they have lived in the state for over a month. Public universities provide letters or utility bills to students to help them meet the residency requirement for voter registration. If the legislation is passed, it would force schools that provide this documentation to charge out-of-state students the same tuition they charge students from Ohio.

This change would effectively eliminate out-of-state tuition, which is more expensive than the rates currently charged to students from Ohio. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, university officials have said they will continue to provide the documentation even if this item remains in the state budget and a group called Innovation Ohio that opposes the legislation has estimated the will cost the schools about $272 million.

Supporters of the legislation said it will streamline government.

"The amendment has the purpose of getting a discussion going on sort of the mismatch that exists in Ohio, where we have one requirement for when a student becomes in-state for tuition purposes and another requirement for voting," Republican state Rep. Ron Amstutz told the Enquirer.

To qualify for in-state tuition, Ohio law requires students to have gone to an Ohio high school or have a parent or spouse who lives or is employed in the state prior to enrollment. Registering to vote simply requires identification and the 30 days of residency.

Opponents of the legislation argue it is designed to give the GOP an electoral advantage by making it harder for students, who traditionally vote Democratic, to cast their ballots. Ohio has been seen as a crucial battleground state in the last few presidential elections. In 2012, President Barack Obama won the state by just 166,000 vote and Ohio has about 24,000 out-of-state students.

"They're somehow trying to thwart the strategy that worked to elect President Obama," Democratic Ohio Senate Minority Leader Eric Kearney told the Enquirer when asked about the motivation of the legislation's supporters.

Tokaji agreed, but added that strategy might backfire.

"The way that they've written this bill makes it clear that its only purpose is to suppress student voting," he said. "What I'd say to the Republican Party is this is not only a shameful strategy, but it's a stupid strategy because, you know, the Republican Party already has a signifcant problem with young voters. They're on the verge of losing a generation of voters. Their path to victory is not to suppress the student vote, but to win the student vote."

The Ohio Senate has until June 5 to remove the provision from the budget, but the Enquirer reported it is "likely to stay." After that, the provision could be removed from the budget by the House speaker, who initially supported it, or Ohio Senate President Keith Faber. Faber's office did not immediately respond to a request from TPM to comment on the provision. If the clause is included in the joint budget from the Legislature, it could be vetoed by Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich. A spokesman for Kasich's office told the Enquirer the item was not in the governor's proposed budget but did not say whether he would veto it if it passed through the Legislature.

If the provision is included in the budget, Tokaji said it could be challenged with a lawsuit.

University officials told the Enquirer they felt it was "inappropriate to use in-state tuition as a mechanism in a voting bill." They also said they were asked to provide the documentation "several years ago" by the Ohio secretary of state. A spokesman for Ohio's current secretary of state, Republican Jon Husted, told TPM he is not pushing for the universities to provide students with documentation to help them register to vote.

"That request was made by a prior secretary of state," the spokesman said. "This is not a priority for Secretary Husted and we think its more about tuition than it is voting. It's not going to prevent anyone from being able to cast a ballot."

For his part, Tokaji disputed the argument the provision is not designed to affect voting.

"Their party line has been this is about tuition not about voting," Tokaji said of Republican supporters of the legislation. "Well, if you believe that, there's a bridge across the Ohio River that I'd like to sell you for cheap."

Republicans haven't been able to resist the temptation to link the IRS scandal to the Affordable Care Act, and use it to build support for mucking up or slowing implementation of the law.

IRS will administer key ACA revenue and subsidy provisions, and a major scandal at the agency offers the GOP a unique opportunity to question the wisdom of expanding its authority.

But some conservatives hope to draw a less direct, but in theory much more consequential, connection between Obamacare and IRS malfeasance -- one which they hope will result in denial of benefits to millions of uninsured taxpayers, and perhaps the unwinding of the entire law.

The idea actually predates the IRS scandal by many months, and may soon be addressed by a federal court in Washington, D.C. Critics contend that under a literal interpretation of the statutory language of the Affordable Care Act, people in states that have refused to set up insurance exchanges -- states that have thus ceded that power to the federal government -- won't be eligible for federal subsidies to purchase insurance.

Enter the IRS, which interpreted that language in its regulation-writing process as meaning that those people will in fact be eligible for insurance subsidies in every state, regardless of whether the exchange is state- or Washington-run.

Conservatives, and even some GOP lawmakers, contend the IRS's interpretation was unlawful -- and now they want to yoke their narrow reading of the law to the unrelated political non-profit controversy.

"The IRS has announced that it will violate the text of the law and issue health insurance subsidies through federal exchanges, something Congress did not authorize," Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) said in floor remarks this week. "The law clearly states that these subsidies are not available to the federal exchange but only to the state-based exchanges. It's the case that the President's health care law will dramatically expand the power of the Internal Revenue Service because the agency is responsible for implementing so much of Obamacare's most important provisions. Well, given what we've learned about IRS malfeasance, does that really sound like a good idea, to give them more responsibility, to hire more agents before we get to the bottom of the present scandal?"

The conservative hue and cry for pursuing this approach to undermining Obamacare is much quieter than the one that culminated in a landmark Supreme Court decision to uphold the law last year. That reflects a combination of factors: the argument's weaker, the politics are much less straightforward, the complaint is aimed at benefits that nobody's received yet. The IRS scandal could change that dynamic.

And though reform supporters don't want to see this idea take flight in the media the way the novel theories underlying previous ACA challenges did, they don't believe it's persuasive enough to pose much of a danger to the law.

"If and when this gets to court, courts are going to look at this and say, well, this isn't a very well-worded statute, but when you look at it as a whole, it's clear that it intends federal exchanges to issue premium tax credits," says Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University, and an ACA supporter.

Ironically, the conservatives who devised this argument cite a paper Jost wrote in 2009 to bolster their own claims. In it, he muses among many other things that Congress could theoretically deny insurance subsidies to federal exchanges on purpose, to incentivize states to erect them on their own. The implication is that Congress may have adopted Jost's idea intentionally.

The legislative history of the ACA, along with its interpretation by government agencies, official analyses by the Congressional Budget Office, and the broad consensus of the members of Congress who wrote the law belies this notion. (Jost never endorsed the idea, either, and called the notion that he inspired or promoted it "weak.")

The Congressional Research Service has looked at this issue closely, too. Its conclusion suggests that unless courts read the portion of the law at issue in isolation, and precisely as the laws opponents characterize it, then legal challengers will have a hard time denying subsidies to individuals via federal exchanges. The IRS' interpretation of the statute would stand. And even that determination would probably have to wait until 2015, before which challengers will have a hard time demonstrating standing.

"By 2015, somebody will have standing to raise it, then I think the question will be are the courts really prepared to rescind tax credits for millions of Americans," Jost said.

On top of all that, if individuals in states with federal exchanges are ultimately denied insurance subsidies, their lawmakers -- most of them red-state lawmakers -- would find themselves under immense pressure to fix the law, and quickly.

Why? Jost explains, "if a court would ever hold that the federal exchanges couldn't issue premium tax credits, it would be a serious problem, because it would deprive millions of Americans of tax breaks and insurance, it would also weaken the individual mandate."

So it's an unlikely outcome that's also a long way off. But the ideas adherents have been waiting for a chance to take it mainstream. The IRS scandal provides it to them.

House Republicans voted on Thursday afternoon to repeal Obamacare -- the third dead-end vote to wipe out the law entirely and the 37th vote to partially repeal or dismantle it.

The party line vote was 229-195. Two Democrats joined every Republican in voting for it.

GOP leaders weren't especially interested in holding the symbolic vote but their hand was forced by conservative and freshman members, who complained that they hadn't yet had the chance to vote to repeal the law and last month quashed a health care messaging bill about pre-existing conditions pushed by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA).

"Obamacare is not the answer," Cantor said Thursday on the House floor. "We should repeal Obamacare and replace it with the health care that the American people desire."

But the repeal vote comes with an awkward complication: It also repeals a central deficit-reduction component of the GOP's own budget by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), which was released in March with much bravado and projections that it would balance the budget within a decade.

Ryan's budget relies on $1.7 trillion in budget savings under the Affordable Care Act -- $1 trillion in new tax revenues and $716 billion in Medicare provider cuts -- to reach its target of $4.6 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years. Nearly all Republicans voted for that budget this spring. And all Republicans, including Ryan, voted Thursday to eliminate that central component, without which the budget wouldn't balance in the 10-year window.

"House Republicans' budget hypocrisy knows no bounds," Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), the Democrats' leader on budget issues, told TPM. "This Obamacare repeal vote ... exposes the mother of all budget gimmicks -- the fact that the Republican claim of balancing the budget depends on the savings and revenues from Obamacare. The minute they vote to repeal the law, their budget is out of balance -- they can't have it both ways."

Neither the Ryan budget nor the Obamacare repeal bill are expected to become law. And the House GOP's contradictory voting pattern on the policy matters serve as an indirect admission that these votes are more about politicking than governing.

Republican seized on an unfolding IRS scandal to stoke fears about the agency implementing parts of the law. They're eager to highlight implementation glitches and use them against Democrats in the 2014 elections. Meanwhile, after the vote, the House Democrats' campaign arm quickly launched web ads targeting 10 ostensibly vulnerable Republican incumbents for expending time and money on yet another repeal vote.

Meanwhile, the law will continue to be implemented, and the bulk of it -- the subsidies, pre-existing conditions guarantee and individual mandate -- will take effect in January.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has bad news for Pentagon officials, defense contractors, national park vacationers and other powerful constituencies dealing with the consequences of sequestration: unlike the Federal Aviation Administration, you won't be getting any special treatment.

At a reporter roundtable in his Capitol Hill suite Wednesday, Reid claimed responsibility for Democrats' decision to provide the FAA -- and only the FAA -- unique flexibility under sequestration to move money between accounts, and thus to avoid scheduled tower closures and controller furloughs causing major travel delays that were expected to drag on for months.

"I take all the blame," Reid acknowledged.

But he now says that powerful stakeholders won't get elite treatment from Congress to alleviate the impact of sequestration, suggesting the indiscriminate spending cuts will either be addressed in their entirety or not at all.

"I think the next thing I see that's going to ask for, 'let's just take care of this,' is going to be the Pentagon," Reid said. "They're asking already for more money for a number of different things. I think the time has come that we -- if something comes up in the military, that we have to understand there are a lot of people out there who don't have lobbyists, who don't have people up here to advocate for them."

"We've got the 70,000 kids on head start, meals on wheels, NIH ... we have all kinds of issues that sequestration is hurting," Reid said. "I'm not going to apologize for what we've done with air-traffic control, but hopefully in the future we're going to stop this."

This is the first time since the FAA bill passed that Reid has claimed that he will not address sequestration in a piecemeal fashion. He made similar public assurances before travel delays became an issue, but then ultimately agreed to grease legislation to fix that problem in isolation.

At a briefing for reporters at the White House Wednesday, senior administration officials -- including a senior intelligence official -- sought to stamp out the last embers of controversy surrounding the inter- and intra-agency processes that yielded official, early talking points about the attacks on a U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya.

Responding to pressure from reporters and Republicans on Capitol Hill, the administration released what they claim are all emails internal to, and between, relevant government agencies drawing up the talking points that Susan Rice used when appearing on Sunday talk shows a few days after the attacks that left four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, dead. Those emails are characteristic of the laborious bureaucratic process required to finalize the talking points, but do reflect disagreements between senior officials in agencies outside the White House over what information the talking points should contain.

The emails vindicate the administration's claim that White House officials did not partake in defensive wrangling over the framing or content of the talking points. But they do confirm that the State Department and CIA were at odds, at least for a time, over how comprehensive the talking points should be.

That squabbling -- which appear to reflect at least in part the two agencies' desires to insulate themselves from blame for the attacks -- is the only remaining aspect of the controversy, perpetuated by Republicans and conservatives, over the administration's private deliberations and public communications in the days after the attack.

Notably, the officials at the briefing sought to downplay that tension as well. The final talking points, they noted, were edited most thoroughly by CIA Deputy Director Michael Morrell, and reflect the modifications the State Department was seeking.

But Morrell's modifications reflected his own disagreements with early drafts, independent of State Department's similar objections, the officials stressed in the briefing, suggesting the rift between State and CIA was less severe than first believed.

That view is backed, in part, by sign-off from Morrell's top terror analyst, who in one email responded to Morrell's edits, "They are fine with me. But, pretty sure HPSCI [the House Permanent Select Committee On Intelligence] won't like them. :-)"

Then-CIA Director David Petraeus did raise objections to the final drafts, reflecting both his desire that the talking points contain information about CIA warnings regarding the security situation in the region, and his belief that HSPCI members would not be satisfied with them.

"No mention of the cable to Cairo, either? Frankly, I'd just as soon not use this, then... NSS's call, to be sure; however, this is certainly not what Vice Chairman Ruppersberger was hoping to get for unclas[sified] use. Regardless, thx for the great work."

NSS refers to the White House National Security Staff. Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD) is the top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee On Intelligence.

The emails do not make clear why HSPCI members, including Ruppersberger, would be unhappy with the talking points, but they suggest that it was because the final version of the talking points lacked sufficient detail about the incident.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has bad news for ambitious Democratic governors with their eyes on the White House in 2016.

"I think most everyone knows if [Hillary Clinton] wants to run for President, she's going to get that nomination," he told a small group of reporters during a roundtable discussion in his Capitol suite Wednesday afternoon.

Reid called the (potential) primary while contextualizing the GOP's obsession with the administration's messaging in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on a U.S. facility in Benghazi last year.

"To keep going over this thing, day after day, on things that have been in the public record for months and months, it's obvious that it's an attempt to embarrass President Obama and to embarrass Hillary Clinton," Reid said, before assessing the Democratic primary field.

Reid acknowledged that the Benghazi attacks raise legitimate national security questions -- just not the ones Republicans are hyper-focused on.

"The Speaker says he's obsessed with this and it appears that's the case," Reid snarked. "There are terrorists -- really that's a new part of the world that we have to understand. There are terrorists who want to do us harm. You, your family, for no reason that we can appreciate or comprehend. That's what we should be doing, is spending our time determining how we're going to handle the terrorists, whether that's economic means to make people feel better or whether it's more security-directed stuff."

Instead, Republicans have harnessed themselves to the allegation that the Obama administration wanted to cover up the fact that there had been a terrorist attack -- a contention that feeds a much uglier conspiracy theory.

"Republicans are doing everything they can to ratchet back more security for embassies," Reid said. "This is just a sideshow, trying to embarrass Obama and Clinton."

If Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants to change the Senate filibuster rules -- either broadly, or more narrowly to fast track presidential nominees -- he'll need a strong case. Part of that case will rest on whether Republicans make good on their threat to block confirmation of Richard Cordray -- President Obama's non-controversial nominee to direct the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- unless and until Democrats agree to weaken his agency's regulatory power.

To that end, he'll hold a vote on Cordray's nomination next week.

"I'm going to make sure he's going to have a vote next week, and then we'll see what happens after that," Reid told a small group of reporters in his Capitol Hill suite Wednesday morning.

Reid's decision to eschew significant reforms to Senate filibuster rules at the beginning of the current Congress -- and his continuing reluctance to revisit those rules despite recent filibusters of cabinet nominees -- angers allies both on and off of Capitol Hill.

But he continues to approach the issue cautiously.

"I'm not going to do anything now, precipitously," he said. "But I'm looking at this very closely.... We're going to fill that job. Cordray is there now. He's going to get a vote."

Reid wasn't able to explain why he believes (or claims to believe) Cordray will ultimately be confirmed. But he alluded to the possibility that he may pursue a rules change mid-session.

"Whether it's Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton that's the next president, I don't think they should have to go through what we've gone through here," Reid said. "People better watch."

Two days after President Obama's commanding reelection victory, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) solemnly declared Obamacare the "law of the land" -- apparently signaling that it was time to move beyond the GOP's now-hopeless quest for repeal.

The conservative pushback was swift and brutal. Immediately, Boehner's office was forced to clarify that he remained committed to repealing the law.

And so House Republicans will vote on Thursday -- yet again -- to wipe out the Affordable Care Act. By their own count, it'll mark the 37th time they've voted to fully repeal or partially dismantle the President's signature achievement.

"Albert Einstein defined insanity as, 'doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.' If that's true, the House Republicans have truly lost their minds," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said Wednesday, calling the Obamacare repeal vote "political kabuki" and highlight the cost of the GOP's dead-end effort.

Conscious that the vote may be perceived as a futile partisan exercise, Boehner's office is working the referees to aggressively prebut that characterization and frame his party's ongoing repeal effort as responsible. A memo his office sent to reporters Tuesday noted that only two of the previous 36 votes were for full repeal and that a few of them, which rescinded funds for smaller pieces of Obamacare, were signed into law.

GOP leaders weren't eager to hold this vote. Last month, led by Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), they tried a different strategy by bringing up a bill to transfer funds from one progressive piece of Obamacare to the law's underfunded high-risk pool which covers preexisting conditions. But conservatives revolted, grumbling that it shores up part of Obamacare and muddles their message. Cantor and GOP leaders were forced to pull the bill at the last minute, depriving them of a talking point about helping sick people.

Behind the scenes, some conservative health wonks who supported Cantor's bill fretted that the GOP lacks credibility on health care policy. But new Republican members complained that they had not yet had the change to vote to repeal Obamacare. The vote was announced shortly after.

"If you're a freshman -- the guys who've been up here the last year, we can go home and say listen, we voted 36 different times to repeal or replace Obamacare. Tell me what the new guys are supposed to say," Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) said at the time. "We haven't had a repeal or replace vote this year."

The vote comes as the rate of growth of national health care spending is slowing significantly and perhaps permanently, complicating GOP predictions that Obamacare would raise costs. Not surprisingly, some supporters of Obamacare have been quick to use those figures to credit Obamacare with driving down costs.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday that it will not score the legislation due to time constraints. In a letter to Republicans, CBO's director pointed to its most recent Obamacare repeal score, in July 2012, which said getting rid of the law would increase budget deficits by $109 billion over the next decade.

Meanwhile, Republicans are hammering Obamacare from all sides: they're investigating the administration's decision to ask health industry executives for help financing implementation of the law, and they're using an unfolding IRS scandal to undermine it.

The repeal vote is expected to pass on a party-line vote. What happens next is less clear. It remains to be seen whether Republicans will be able to close that chapter after this and move on to more serious health care legislation, or whether they'll remain trapped in a hopeless battle that they've lost in Congress, the Supreme Court and at the ballot box.

It was inevitable once the IRS admitted it had inappropriately targeted conservative non-profits for excessive scrutiny that Republicans would blend the controversy into their ongoing attacks on the Affordable Care Act. After all, the Affordable Care Act tasks the IRS with administering tax collection and subsidy provision under the law, and will thus require it to hire new employees.

Conservatives and GOP members of Congress issued dire warnings shortly after the news broke. But the fact that the revelation came less than a week before the House of Representatives votes (again) to repeal Obamacare probably hastened a legislative linkage.

And here it is.

In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) calls for freezing those dollars for now.

"I believe we need to address IRS funding in the health care law now, which may mean calling for a temporary suspension until it is clearer where this funding will go," Heller wrote. "I want you to know I intend to introduce legislation this week to suspend IRS funding for new agents enforcing the health care law until Congress sees an improvement. I am hoping this legislation is unnecessary and that we may work together to find a solution to this problem together."

The letter is a bit muddled. It alludes to President Obama's budget and the ACA itself, without drawing distinctions between the two. Obama's budget calls for higher IRS spending ahead of ACA implementation, but has no binding force.

It's also unclear whether Heller proposes to (perhaps temporarily) withhold money that's already been appropriated to the IRS, or to rescind its authority to spend current and future funds to implement and administer the law.

A Heller spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for clarification.

At his weekly briefing with reporters Tuesday, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) addressed the conflation directly. "I don't think that this [IRS controversy] is anything that is going to undermine the IRS's credibility vis-a-vis the implementation of the Affordable Care Act."

Perhaps. But it's already refueling the GOP's ongoing political drive to repeal the law in full or in part.

And it could draw more attention to brewing conservative efforts to rescind ACA insurance subsidies to beneficiaries in states that will have federally-run exchanges. Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) tried on Tuesday to tie that more obscure issue to the unfolding non-profit scandal.

"The IRS has announced that it will violate the text of the law and issue health insurance subsidies through federal exchanges, something Congress did not authorize," Cornyn said remarks on the floor. "The law clearly states that these subsidies are not available to the federal exchange but only to the state-based-exchanges. It's the case that the President's health care law will dramatically expand the power of the Internal Revenue Service because the agency is responsible for implementing so much of Obamacare's most important provisions. Well, given what we've learned about IRS malfeasance, does that really sound like a good idea, to give them more responsibility, to hire more agents before we get to the bottom of the present scandal?"

You can read Heller's letter in full below.

Ohio's Rob Portman is the latest Republican senator caught trying to cloud his opposition to expanding background checks for gun sales.

Last month, shortly after the Senate quashed legislation requiring background checks at gun shows and in Internet sales, one of Portman's constituents, 34-year-old Peter Shulman of Cleveland Heights, wrote to a letter voicing his disapproval of the senator's vote against it.

About 11 days later, Portman wrote back saying he cares about addressing gun violence and insisted that he did vote in favor of stronger background checks for gun buyers.

"[T]he Grassley amendment I supported would have reauthorized and improved the National Instant Criminal Background Check System," Portman wrote to Shulman.

The substitute GOP bill Portman voted for -- which was also rejected -- would not close any loopholes for buyers to dodge background checks. Instead it would enhance the amount of mental health reporting into the existing database. It would restore gun rights for recovered mentally ill people, those who are in a psychiatric hospital for observation, and those who commit themselves voluntarily. The National Rifle Association supported the bill but gun control advocates say it would make it easier for dangerous people to obtain guns.

Shulman, an assistant professor of history at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, noted that Portman's explanation may appear to someone unfamiliar with the policy details as support for expanding background checks, even though he voted against the policy.

"He's absolutely obfuscating his position," Shulman told TPM by phone on Tuesday afternoon. "I think it's completely misleading. And it seems designed to mislead."

Portman joins the ranks of fellow GOP Sens. Kelly Ayotte (NH) and Jeff Flake (AZ). They hold the same stance as Portman but have also claimed to support stronger background checks while weathering the political storm for voting against the popular policy. The gun lobby opposed the expanded measure and promised to target senators who voted for it.

Although he claimed to support background checks, Portman admitted in his letter to Shulman that he opposed the main background check legislation, arguing that while it would have "expanded background checks for most private sales and private transfers of guns," it would have "done nothing to stop the Newtown tragedy."

Shulman said he didn't vote for Portman in 2010 and wouldn't consider voting for him again unless he changes his position on the gun measure. The duplicity, he said, also doesn't help.

"It's crazy," Shulman said, "and yes, I think it is intentional."

Ryan Christopher Fogle, the "third secretary" at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow who was detained by Russia's domestic intelligence agency and being accused of being a CIA spy Monday night, is a former frat boy and Daily Show fan from Missouri.

According to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB, Fogle was found in possession of a letter attempting to recruit an officer from one of Russia's special services to work with the CIA, two wigs, three pairs of sunglasses, cash, and a knife, among other things. After he was detained, Fogle was turned over to the U.S. Embassy and expelled from Russia Tuesday.

Records link Fogle's family to two different inner-ring suburbs of St. Louis, Mo, Clayton and Richmond Heights. He reportedly graduated from Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School, a high school in the wealthy St/ Louis suburb of Ladue, in 2002. Four years later, Fogle graduated from Colgate University.

While at Colgate, Fogle was a member of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. He also was a member of the Konosioni Senior Honor Society, a group of 26 student leaders chosen by their peers each year to "preserve and promote a greater appreciation and understanding of Colgate's honored heritage and celebrated traditions." Fogle participated in student government and, at the end of his sophomore year, was elected to serve as an election commissioner. As a freshman, Fogle was a member of a committee that organized lectures on campus. In 2003, he discussed a lecture he helped plan featuring former Daily Show contributor Mo Rocca with the school newspaper. Fogle was clearly a big fan of the show.

"Not only is Mo Rocca a comedian, but he is extremely talented and well known. Almost everyone here watches the Daily Show with some consistency," Fogle said. "When he's on the show he's absolutely hilarious."

After college, Fogle stayed in touch with his classmates. A 2008 issue of a Colgate magazine said Fogle attended the Colgate-Georgetown football game in November 2007 with other members of the class of 2006. The winter 2010-2011 issue of his fraternity's newsletter included contact information for Fogle in Virginia and indicated he wanted to correspond with fraternity members. In late 2011, the email address Fogle listed in the fraternity newsletter was among those identified as belonging to subscribers to briefings published by the global intelligence company Stratfor in a release from the hacking group Anonymous.

Fogle also maintained a presence on Facebook, though most of his page was not visible to the general public. The only pictures that can be seen on his profile are nine photos of landmarks that seem to be from international travels including shots of Masada, the Kremlin, and the Great Sphinx of Giza. Fogle's profile picture is a photo of waves hitting a beach.

Though Fogle left behind a digital trail, those who knew him offline provided no information about him to TPM. Multiple former classmates of Fogle's declined to discuss him. A woman who answered the phone at his family home in Missouri who identified herself as "Ms. Fogle" also did not wish to speak with us.

"I don't really have anything to say. Thank you though," she said before hanging up.

The past week's uproars about the Obama administration have had some Republican lawmakers revisiting one of the party's favorite pastimes: impeachment.

For much of his time in the White House, President Obama has faced threats of impeachment from Republicans on Capitol Hill. His transgressions? Everything from using executive orders for his own agenda to being an impediment to theirs. TPM compiled a list of some of the members of Congress -- all Republicans -- who have invoked the "I-word" during the Obama years.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK)

Calling Benghazi "most egregious cover-up in American history," the Oklahoma Republican floated the suggestion last week. He predicted that impeachment may no longer be a taboo subject. "People may be starting to use the I-word before too long," Inhofe said.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT)

Backing up Inhofe, Chaffetz said Monday that he won't take the possibility of impeachment off the table because he didn't know what other details related to Benghazi will emerge. "It's certainly a possibility," Chaffetz said, as quoted by the Salt Lake Tribune.

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX)

As the White House readied its gun control proposal in January, Obama said he would implement some of his ideas through executive action. That mere suggestion was enough for Stockman to issue a statement threatening to thwart the White House's efforts "by any means necessary" -- including impeachment.

Rep. Trey Radel (R-FL)

The freshman Florida Republican indicated he was receptive to Stockman's idea, saying in January that "all options should be on the table" as the White House sought gun control measures. Congress, Radel said, "needs to hold the President accountable for the decisions that he's making right now."

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX)

Arguably the least surprising inclusion on this list, Gohmert in January blasted Obama, saying the president had "already abused the law enough times that it's just been staggering." Gohmert told Newsmax that using an executive order to implement gun laws would be sufficient grounds to impeach Obama. "It's not a president who steps up and says: 'You know what? Previous Congresses have passed the law -- and it's been signed into law, and I disagree with it, so I'm just going to create new law -- and as I speak, so shall it be,'" Gohmert said.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN)

It may come as a surprise to some that, when she was asked in 2010 if Obama should be impeached for failure to secure the border, the doyenne of the tea party stopped short of a full-throated endorsement. "Whether or not this is an impeachable offense is one that the Congress would have to make a determination on," Bachmann said at the time.

But by 2011, Bachmann was in the throes of a Republican presidential campaign and ready to make a "determination" on impeachment. Asked by a voter in Iowa if she would "impeach him and get him out of the way," Bachmann said repeatedly that she agreed.

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC)

In the summer of 2011, when he was still a member of the House of Representatives, now-Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) told a tea party group that Obama risked impeachment if he eschewed congressional approval to raise the debt limit. "This president is looking to usurp congressional oversight to find a way to get it done without us," Scott said. "My position is that is an impeachable act from my perspective."

Rep. Steve King (R-IA)

About the same time as Scott's remarks, King took to Twitter to declare that discussion of defaulting on the nation's debt was pretty much a waste of time. Such a scenario would obviously lead to Obama's impeachment, he said. End of story.

STOP talking about default. The 1st dime of each $1 of revenue services debt. Obama would be impeached if he blocked debt payments. C C & B!

— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) July 25, 2011

Campaign finance reports filed this week by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) show he has collected $3,000 in donations since March from a lobbyist with the National Rifle Association.

The latest of those reports became public Monday, just as Christie's Democratic opponent in the Garden State governor's race, state Sen. Barbara Buono, has been hitting him for having a weak stance on gun control.

"We've seen really exceptional leadership across the river with Gov. Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg, but unfortunately, in New Jersey, Gov. Christie has not shown leadership," Buono told TPM by phone on Monday evening.

Christie's filing, his first of the general election campaign, included a $1,000 donation made on April 23 by NRA lobbyist Randy Kozuch. It also showed Kozuch gave $2,000 on March 5. Campaign finance records did not show any other donations to Christie from the NRA, or other gun groups prior to this year. Neither Christie's campaign nor Kozuch responded to requests for comment.

The disclosure of the donations came as Buono has been increasingly focusing on the governor's gun control policies. On Monday, she campaigned with Newark, N.J. Mayor Cory Booker (D) and focused on guns.

Her criticism has centered on a task force Christie launched in January to address violence following the school shooting in Newtown, Conn. Buono has repeatedly described the recommendations issued by that commission as "shallow" and accused Christie of using it to avoid the issue of gun control immediately after the shooting.

"He set up this commission right after Newtown. I'm not sure why he set up the commission considering Vice President Biden had already set up a commission," said Buono. "It really appeared as though it was a delay tactic to delay and put it off hoping that people would calm down after the latest tragedy."

Christie unveiled the task force's recommendations last month. It included plans to limit sales of violent video games, ban the Barrett .50 caliber rifle, which is featured in the "Call of Duty" video games, and change New Jersey's rules for treating the mentally ill. Buono said these proposals do not include the most crucial elements of gun control policy.

"It really punts on all of the important issues," Buono said. "It didn't take up background checks, universal background checks. It didn't adjust reduction of magazines from 15 to 10. He's even refused to acknowledge that there is a private sale loophole."

Buono implied Christie has avoided taking a stronger position on gun control because he's harboring presidential ambitions for the 2016 cycle.

"I think what has come through loud and clear with this decision as well as so many of his others is that they're all calibrated with an eye to how they play out on the national scene and how they appeal to the voters in the cornfields of Iowa instead of doing what's right for the people in the neighborhoods of New Jersey," said Buono.

Buono came up with her own plan for tightening New Jersey's gun laws that she said was inspired by meeting with the mothers of Newtown victims. Her plan focuses on lowering New Jersey's magazine capacity limit from 15 to 10 bullets, closing the private sale loophole, and ensuring that ammunition is sold in "face-to-face transactions" rather than online, over the phone, or through the mail.

When he announced his task force's recommendations last month, Christie repeatedly noted New Jersey already has the "second-strictest gun laws in America." On magazine capacity, he said he does not think the state's gun laws need to be tightened.

"I think that where we are now is the right place to be. We're as strict as almost anybody in the country at 15. In fact I heard the President last week say that Colorado's was a national model when Colorado moved to 15, which is where we are," said Christie. "Once you have the President calling it a national model and we're the second-strictest gun laws in the state I didn't think there was any need to go there."

New Jersey's legislature is currently in the midst of voting on a series of gun control bills. Buono said she believes they will ultimately vote for universal background checks, but not a reduction in magazine capacity. When TPM asked Christie's office whether he would veto a bill that called for universal background checks or reductions in magazine capacity, a spokesman pointed to the remarks Christie made when unveiling his task force's recommendations.

"Some things I may sign; some things I may veto. Some things I may conditionally veto. It depends on what they send to me," Christie said.

Though Christie hasn't declared his intentions, Buono is fairly confident he would veto a bill with either universal background checks of magazine capacity reductions.

"If I were a betting man, I would bet there would be at least a conditional veto," said said with a laugh. "Maybe there's some modest elements of the bill that he would support, but I think, by and large, it'll still be a veto."

Having found themselves on the wrong side of a cause supported by the vast majority of Americans, opponents of expanded background checks for gun purchases are working to turn the debate upside down by claiming to support the policy.

The most notable example surrounds Sen. Kelly Ayotte's (R-NH) vote against legislation to mandate background checks for firearm buyers at gun shows and online sales -- which current law does not require. Ayotte was the only senator in the Northeast to vote against it.

But an ad released Monday by Sen. Marco Rubio praised Ayotte's vote "to fix background checks." An earlier spot by the National Rifle Association declared that Ayotte "voted for a bipartisan plan to make background checks more effective."

In fact, Ayotte (and nearly every Republican senator) voted to block the Manchin-Toomey legislation to expand background checks. Instead she voted for a substitute Republican measure to include more mental health reporting in the FBI criminal background check system and permit recovered mentally ill people to buy a gun.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a gun control advocacy group founded by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has attacked Ayotte for her vote. A spokeswoman for the group argued that the Republican bill Ayotte voted for "would have actually made it easier for guns to fall into the hands of the dangerously mentally ill."

"It's absurd that Senator Ayotte's vote for a bill created by the Washington gun lobby that actually weakens current laws -- is being cited as 'proof' of her vote to fix background checks," MAIG spokeswoman Erika Soto Lamb told TPM by email. "[T]he ad from Senator Rubio's PAC is just the latest obfuscation in attempts to explain Senator Ayotte's unpopular vote to the 89% of Granite Staters who support this commonsense reform."

Tom Jensen, the director of the Democratic-affiliated Public Policy Polling, attributed the messaging in Ayotte's defense to the fact that 75 percent of voters in New Hampshire support mandatory background checks at gun shows and Internet sales when asked.

"What we're seeing is that if you want to buttress and prop up the senators who voted against Manchin-Toomey, you're going to have to resort to those tactics," Jensen told TPM on Monday. "So [Rubio and the NRA] are trying to finesse it in a way that it sounds like Ayotte was on the side of 75 percent of voters, even though she wasn't."

Ayotte has taken taken a beating at home for her vote against background checks. The pushback for her reflects a broader effort by pro-gun entities to hold turf and prevent an exodus among their allies toward the view that most Americans hold.

"Out of state special interests are running false ads attacking me and even lying about my efforts to prevent gun-related violence. I want to set the record straight," wrote Ayotte in a recent op-ed defending herself. "I support effective background checks and in fact voted recently to improve the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS)."

The same tactic has been used recently by Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who was recently hammered for leading a mother whose son was killed in the Aurora, Colo. shooting to believe he supported background checks. In reality, he also voted against expanding them.

"I've always supported background checks," Flake said last week.

National support for expanded background checks has dipped from 90 percent in a new PPP poll, but it remains robust and bipartisan at roughly 75 percent. Democrats say they'll keep fighting. Ayotte and others who voted against background checks when it fell prey to a Senate filibuster last month have since seen their approval ratings fall.

"If you are gonna prop up these folks who voted against this popular bill, the only way you can do it is by sort of re-jiggering the debate," Jensen said. "The concept of background checks has weathered the political fire. The public is still overwhelmingly behind it."

The White House has "no knowledge of any attempt" by the Department of Justice to collect the phone records of Associated Press journalists, press secretary Jay Carney said Monday night.

"Other than press reports, we have no knowledge of any attempt by the Justice Department to seek phone records of the AP," Carney said in a statement, per a White House pool report.

"We are not involved in decisions made in connection with criminal investigations, as those matters are handled independently by the Justice Department. Any questions about an ongoing criminal investigation should be directed to the Department of Justice," he added.

The news organization announced on Monday that DOJ "secretly obtained" two months of telephone records from reporters and editors employed at the international news agency in April and May of 2012, characterizing the action as a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into its news gathering. The records listed incoming and outgoing calls and the duration of each call made on the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn.

Although DOJ has not yet said why it subpoenaed the records, the AP suggests it involves a probe on the leaking of government information about a foiled terror plot in Yemen last year.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said Monday night that he was "very troubled" by the allegations and maintained that the government owed an explanation as to why it obtained the phone records.

"The burden is always on the government when they go after private information - especially information regarding the press or its confidential sources," he said in a statement. "I want to know more about this case, but on the face of it, I am concerned that the government may not have met that burden. I am very troubled by these allegations and want to hear the government's explanation."

Attorney General Eric Holder, whom the AP said would have been required to sign off on any such subpoena, is coincidentally scheduled to testify before a DOJ oversight committee on Wednesday.

Support for background checks has dipped nationally but remains strong, according to a poll by the Democratic-affiliated Public Policy Polling set for release Tuesday.

The finding, shared in advance with TPM, was that 73 percent of registered American voters support "requiring background checks for all gun sales, including gun shows and the internet," while 21 percent oppose it.

"The 90 percent support we were seeing for background checks earlier in the year isn't there anymore," PPP director Tom Jensen told TPM by email.

The party-line split for background checks was 87-8 percent among Democrats, 63-30 among Republicans and 62-31 among independents.

"With the NRA and most Republican Senators opposing Manchin/Toomey that opposition has trickled down to some conservative voters as well," Jensen said. "But we continue to see more than 70 percent support overall and 60 percent support from Republicans, and that's still pretty remarkable for any controversial issue in this political climate."

The PPP survey suggests that background checks aren't quite 90-10 issue that many polls have found it to be throughout this year. But it also shows enduring support across the partisan spectrum for expanding mandatory criminal checks that the vast majority of Democratic senators support and that Republicans oppose.

Legislation to require background checks for purchases at guns shows and Internet sales last month failed to clear the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a Senate filibuster. Democratic proponents of the measure have vowed to keep pushing until they succeed.

The PPP poll surveyed 1,099 registered voters between May 5-8 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Update: May 13, 2013 1:09 PM

On Monday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg declined to discuss the accusations reporters at his media company, Bloomberg News, used the company's financial information terminals to track government officials and investment bank staffers.

"No, I can't say anything. I have an agreement with the Conflict of Interests Board. You'll have to talk to the company," Bloomberg said.

Late Update (3:03 PM): An initial version of this post said Bloomberg cited his contract, upon listening to better quality audio it was clear he said COIB. The mayor's office told TPM the agreement he made with the COIB when he first took office in 2002 specified that he should not be involved in Bloomberg News' day-to-day operations so it would not be appropriate for him to comment.

Questions about Bloomberg reporters' usage of terminal data have been mounting since last week when it was revealed the investment banking company Goldman Sachs complained about Bloomberg journalists accessing data on its staffers. Since then, reports have emerged of Bloomberg reporters being trained to use the terminals to track story subjects and of journalists using the terminals to gain information on employees at J.P. Morgan Chase and top officials at the U.S. Treasury Department and Federal Reserve. Bloomberg has admitted at least one of its journalists gained information on Goldman Sachs through terminal data.

Bloomberg was asked about the issues with the terminals at a press conference announcing a water cleanup project in Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal would be completed on schedule this year in spite of Hurricane Sandy, which affected the area. Though Bloomberg left his position as an executive at his eponymous company when he first ran for mayor in 2001, he remains the majority owner. After he initially declined to discuss the situation, a second reporter asked him about terminal tracking that occurred while he was at the company and he again refused to respond.

"I don't know what youre talking about, you'll have to talk to the company," he said.

One of the best known polling firms in the nation plans next month to reveal big changes to the way it does business after falling flat during last year's election.

Gallup's editor-in-chief Frank Newport wrote in an email published Monday by Politico that "a blue ribbon group of outside experts" is conducting a review of the firm's "methodological issues" during the 2012 election. The findings will be unveiled during an event on June 4 at Gallup's Washington, D.C. office.

The move comes after an embarrassing stretch for Gallup in which the firm was widely panned for its 2012 election polls. Soon after the election, Fordham University put the firm near the bottom of its rankings for pollster accuracy. And more recently, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough launched a blistering on-air attack last week against the firm.

Newport responded to the attack in the email to Politico.

"Our review includes a significant amount of new research, including fielding new research experiments focused on six specific areas of pre-election polling, along with simulations and re-examination of every component of the pre-election polling process," Newport wrote. "All of this research, some of it focused on the future of election polling, is one reason why it is taking several months. A number of changes have already been implemented in our on-going tracking, and others will continue to be tested, including experimental tests involving voter sampling and likely voter models."

Newport added in a phone call to Politico that Gallup's changes will include a different method of asking respondents about their race and what he described as a different way of bringing "landline and cellphone users into the sample."

About a month before last year's election, Gallup adjusted the sample of its daily tracking poll to an even split between respondents reached by landline telephones and those reached by cell phones.

But that change did little to improve the accuracy of the organization's results. After shifting to a narrower sample of likely voters, the Gallup tracking poll showed Mitt Romney with solid leads over President Barack Obama in the closing weeks of the campaign -- although the final Gallup poll before Election Day showed the Republican nominee's lead had fallen to only a point.

Weeks after the election, Newport wrote a post on the firm's website in which he defended Gallup's findings and appeared to take a thinly veiled shot at polling aggregators.

"Individual farmers can each make a perfectly rational decision to graze their cows on the town commons," Gallup wrote. "But all of these rational decisions together mean that the commons becomes overgrazed and, in the end, there is no grass left for any cow to graze. Many individual rational decisions can end up in a collective mess."

But its performance in the 2012 election left Gallup with no shortage of critics, including Obama's 2012 campaign manager, Jim Messina. He said Gallup's poor performance was nothing new.

"Gallup has been wrong repeatedly in presidential elections for a long time," he said.