Among the other goodies in store for America in the lame duck Congress is a bid to gut financial regulatory and other agencies and set up a process to take away their independent control and subsume them under the power of the executive. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, under the direction of outgoing chair Joe Lieberman, plans to pass the Independent Agency Regulatory Analysis Act, S.3468, out of committee and into a fast track process. Mark Warner, Susan Collins and Rob Portman are the drives forces behind it. Americans for Financial Reform and other groups have raised alarms about it.

An official with the National Counterterrorism Center officially described the September 11 assault on the US consulate in Benghazi, which killed four Americans including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, as a terrorist attack, though he hedged by saying it was an “unplanned” one.