IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: Lawmakers: FBI impeding inquiry into IRS targeting of conservative groups. Ya think? “Six months after it began, the FBI’s investigation has resulted in no release of information. The congressmen said the FBI even rescinded an offer for an in-person briefing with the assistant director in charge of the investigation. The reversal, after the FBI consulted with the Justice Department, suggests political meddling, the two investigators said.”

JAMES TARANTO: ObamaCare and the Totalitarian Mindset: All of us work for the government.

Suppose some inventor hatches an idea for what he thinks would be a great and revolutionary new product. He raises money from investors, sets up office, hires people–and fails spectacularly. The company’s customer service is atrocious, the product is expensive and lousy, and the whole business plan is fundamentally flawed. Who’s to blame?

The news media, of course. After all, journalists could have put out stories touting the virtues of the product and explaining how to navigate the crummy customer-service system, and maybe then the whole business plan would have worked out.

That, at any rate, is the argument Paul Waldman puts forth in an article for the leftist American Prospect. Of course being a good leftist, Waldman is not blaming the media for the failure of a private business. But then neither would any nonleftist. Yet because the enterprise in question is a governmental one–ObamaCare, in case you’ve been away from Earth for the past two months–the argument somehow makes sense to him.

We find it not only wrongheaded but sinister (in every sense of the word). Waldman argues that journalists have a “responsibility” to provide “audiences with practical information that could help them navigate the new system”–and not just that, but to provide such information “repeatedly or people won’t get it.”

Read the whole thing.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: University Research Spending Flat in 2012.

NARRATIVE CONTROL: Roll Call: NSA, Security Issues Forced Out of Defense Debate.

The uproar over domestic surveillance and national security issues may die down to a whimper in the Senate this year.

While the annual debate over the defense authorization bill usually provides senators with a megaphone on those and other controversial issues, this year’s bizarre end to November — with Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., exercising the “nuclear option” to end filibusters on most nominations — served to bury the contentious debate over the National Security Agency’s mass data and intelligence collection on Americans.

Indeed, President Barack Obama is likely to dodge what could have been an uncomfortable fight with many members of his own party over the NSA and other security issues.

It’s all about managing the narrative.

POTEMKIN WEBSITE: Insurers still reporting ‘significant problems’ with Obamacare enrollment data.

Obama administration officials insisted Monday that the tech team overseeing fixes to the troubled federal healthcare.gov website had resolved most of the errors plaguing the enrollment information being sent to insurers.

But insurers haven’t yet noticed a difference, according to a spokesman for industry lobbying group America’s Health Insurance Plans.

The files, known as “834” forms, contain all of the relevant personal information for individuals who have signed up for health insurance, along with details on their plan choices. But these forms have been riddled with errors such as duplicated enrollments and spouses getting mixed up with children.

If these forms are not fixed, then insurers cannot smoothly process payments or ensure that individuals are enrolled in the right plans. This could be a nightmare come Jan. 1, when individuals start attempting to use their insurance. Some may show up at doctors’ offices thinking they are covered, but find out that they never were actually enrolled.

That’s almost a month away. They’re just trying to get through this news cycle.

UPDATE: Reader Sandi Drake writes: “How many Potemkin villages does it take to elect Hillary?” The big problem is that they’re different Potemkin villages than the ones Obama is erecting.

LOW-INFORMATION PRESIDENT: National Journal: A White House shake-up can’t stop with a sacrificial lamb. Obama needs to change the people around him to change how he governs.

The Affordable Care Act fiasco underscores the need for a significant overhaul. Despite three years to prepare, the HealthCare.gov website didn’t work upon launch, and the president misled millions of Americans by promising during his reelection campaign that they could keep their insurance plans and their doctors. As The New York Times reported Sunday, the story of how Obama’s team responded to the failures “reveals an insular White House that did not initially appreciate the magnitude of its self-inflicted wounds, and sought help from trusted insiders as it scrambled to protect Mr. Obama’s image.”

That description is a damning indictment that could be applied broadly to the Obama years. For all his strengths, Obama is a private, almost cloistered, politician surrounded by fawning aides who don’t understand why anybody would object to his policies; thus they are often caught flat-footed by critics. They often put political tactics ahead of governing, protecting the president’s image with narrow-minded zeal.

Obama himself has no patience for the nitty-gritty of politics and governance, which means he’s both loath to build bipartisan relationships outside the White House and unlikely to directly manage a project, even one as important as Obamacare.

“I think it’s terribly mismanaged,” former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said of the health care law. A Democrat who supports Obama, Rendell said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that had he been president, the website would have been tested repeatedly before launching “and the tests would have been done in front of me.”

That’s not Obama’s style. So he needs to hire people who will help him empathize with his critics, build significant relationships, and oversee a sprawling bureaucracy that is critical to the future of the Democratic Party. He needs a ruthless management team that will force him to be engaged.

Elected twice, and he needs someone ruthless to force him to be engaged? If that’s the case, he should resign.

PIGGERY-POKERY: “A new Gallup poll finds that those who know the least about Obamacare tend to be the ones who gave Barack Obama both of his terms in the presidency.” Low-information voters.

BROKEN PROMISE: White House: Obama hasn’t yet signed up for Obamacare.

President Obama has yet to make good on the administration’s promises that he would sign up for health insurance on the new government exchanges, the White House acknowledged on Monday.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said that Obama has not signed up for Obamacare and that he did have a reason for the delay.

A reporter pressed Carney on whether the White House would make it an open-press event if and when Obama does enroll.

“I’ll get back to you,” Carney replied.

Shortly after Obama signed the new health care law in March 2010, a White House official said the president planned to walk the walk and sign up for the insurance exchanges his law created.

“The president will participate in the exchange,” an administration official told USA Today at the time.

Expiration date, hit.

CREEPY: We Have a ‘White House Youth’ Now?

DAILY CALLER: Documents reveal British banned Geller and Spencer because of their ‘pro-Israeli views.’

CLASSY: To Push Gun Control, Obama Campaign Arm To Hold Newtown Anniversary Events. I like that The Hill calls it a “campaign arm,” though it’s super-creepy that a term-limited president has one. . . .

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Wither, Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania’s 14-university state system is feeling the burn of budget cuts and declining enrollment with little relief in sight.

In the last few years, the universities have shed 5 percent of their permanent work force and discontinued or frozen new enrollment to 198 academic programs. But that wasn’t enough to shore up their budgets. Now universities in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education are looking to end programs, lay off dozens of full-time faculty members, and cut ties with numerous adjuncts and more staffers.

No surprise to those who have been reading InstaPundit, of course.

ED DRISCOLL: It’s Potemkin Websites All The Way Down.

OUT: NUCLEAR OPTION. In: Nuclear Winter.

WHITE HOUSE FLACK DODGES REPEATED FLAK: Is It ‘Mission Accomplished’ for Healthcare.Gov? Don’t Ask Jay Carney.

TWEET OF THE NIGHT: “I’m eating pie in a truck stop strip club and honestly feeling pretty happy about things.”

WORLD’S LONGEST BOOKS: Signs of Ezra Klein’s lack of real-world work experience.

THE 21ST CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT AS I HAD ANTICIPATED: It’s a bug’s life — until the lice nitpickers arrive. “Last year, the co-founders earned a $125,000 profit on nearly $700,000 in revenue. That’s a lot of bug removal. They pay themselves about $50,000 each, and roll the $125,000 in profit back into the business. Not bad for picking bugs off children’s heads. And that’s just the beginning. Eckert and Fields have ambitions to go national. They have four franchises throughout the East Coast.”

WELL, HERE’S A PREDICTION ABOUT ME that didn’t pan out. But I’ve been the object of all sorts of failed predictions.

IT’S ALMOST LIKE BIOLOGY MAKES A DIFFERENCE: Men’s Top 3 Sexual Regrets Are Extremely Different from Women’s.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Abolish The TSA.