Through chilling legal jargon and a patchwork of legal citations from prior case law, a Justice Department white paper leaked to NBC News provides one of the clearest indication yet that the administration of President Barack Obama has claimed the power to kill people and there are few checks on this claimed executive power.

Turkish news is reporting that NBC News Senior Correspondent Richard Engel has been missing in Syria since Thursday. Turkish journalist Aziz Akyavaş is also missing.

Engel has been one of the few western journalists reporting from within Syria. NBC is not commenting at this time.

Bruce Springsteen — A Night With The Jersey Devil. Today, Bruce announced that he will be performing at the Hurricane Sandy Relief telethon and concert tomorrow (Friday) night.

If the Romney campaign thought the naming of a running mate would cause the media to move on from the issue of Romney’s tax returns, they were sadly mistaken. As long as Romney refuses to release more than what has only been a single incomplete tax return, the issue will hound him. It will be asked of him, his running mate, his surrogates and even his wife.

The Pentagon has a well-documented history of seeking to influence entertainment that Hollywood produces so that negative portrayals of the United State military are not produced, but the NBC show “Stars Earn Stripes” takes the propagandistic efforts of the military-entertainment industrial complex to the next level.

It is a running joke that Americans learn geography or about countries outside the United States only when the US military decides to invade a country. Presumably, this is why NBC broadcasters Bob Costas, Matt Lauer, and Meredith Viera announcing the Olympics opening ceremony would be sharing trivia about each country, especially information that Americans might be able to understand even if they were terribly uneducated. But that should be no justification for the candor of the commentary during the broadcast of the Opening Ceremony, which was frankly an example of smug American elitism and often outright condescension.

There is more confirmation that President Obama holds a small but consistent lead over Mitt Romney. The latest CNN-ORC poll found Obama with a three point lead among registered voters, Obama 49% – Romney 46%. That’s not changed since the ACA Supreme Court ruling. The other good news for Obama in this poll is that his job approval rating is 51 percent.

The presidential election is effectively tied in the swing states of Colorado, Iowa and Nevada according to the latest Marist/NBC News polls. President Obama is technically up by two in Nevada and one in Colorado but those small leads are within the margin of error.

A President with poor marks on the economy, running for re-election during a bad economy and with the economy the number one issue should have some serious political problems. Yet both recent polls show him with a small lead. The Post/ABC poll has Obama leading by three, and the NBC/WSJ poll has Obama up by four. That suggests Americans don’t think Mr. Romney could do any better on the issue they care about the most.

For reasons only he and his producers can fathom, NBC’s Meet the Press host, David Gregory, thought it would be edifying to feature a debate about the economy and budget issues between two men who don’t have a clue about how to help the economy and who differ only in degree about how much Congress should pass measures that will hurt growth, put more people out of work, leave more people uninsured and reduce more people’s wages and retirement incomes.