Obama to Nominate Comey as Head of FBI

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The Washington Post is reporting that President Obama plans to nominate James Comey, the former Bush deputy attorney general who became famous for declining to certify the legality of the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program, to become head of the FBI:

The White House had narrowed the search in recent days to Comey and Lisa Monaco, a former assistant attorney general for national security who became Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser earlier this year.

Law enforcement and administration officials said the White House was concerned that Monaco’s confirmation process would run into obstacles in Congress. Comey’s nomination, on the other hand, was described by some officials as a symbol of bipartisanship.

Of course. Because everyone knows that nominating a Democrat to run the FBI would be an intolerable provocation.

I sure hope this reporting is wrong. Nominating Comey because he thinks he’s the best person for the job is one thing. But if Obama thinks that nominating Comey will be seen as some kind of bipartisan olive branch, he’s crazy.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

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