With President Barack Obama having issued an executive order banning secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons and then-CIA Director Leon Panetta having stated that “CIA no longer operates detention facilities or black sites,” one might think a credible report that the CIA is still operating such a prison would make the front page of every newspaper in the country and be covered on all major television news programs. Alas, in 21st-century America, where the news media are the handmaidens of the state, the story has largely been ignored; and those outlets that have deemed it worthy of coverage have done so in such a way as to play down its revelations and play up the government’s denials.

Think U.S. troops will be leaving Iraq by the end of the year? Think again. CIA Director Leon Panetta, who has been nominated to succeed Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense, says that the Iraqi government is probably going to request that some U.S. forces remain in the country and that Washington will almost certainly oblige.

U.S. taxpayers are being soaked to the tune of $2 million a day for President Barack Obama’s illegal war in Libya, according to a Defense Department memo obtained by the Financial Times. The document, entitled “United States Contribution to Operation Unified Protector,” says that the government is spending about $60 million a month on the mission and had spent $664 million by mid-May.

Nowhere on the planet is common sense a scarcer commodity than in Washington, D.C. The $14 trillion in federal debt — much of it held by foreign, and frequently unfriendly, countries — would seem to be sufficient evidence of that. As if that weren’t bad enough, it now emerges that many of those same creditor nations are also the recipients of U.S. foreign aid.

In the wake of the alleged killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. special forces on May 2, some in Congress are beginning to question whether American aid to Pakistan, the country in which bin Laden was found, ought to be terminated. One of those, Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas), is actually sponsoring legislation to cut off such aid. Unfortunately, Poe’s bill gives the Obama administration, which has already expressed its desire to continue sending billions of taxpayer dollars to Islamabad, enough leeway that even if the bill passes, the aid is likely to continue.

As if it weren’t enough that the Obama administration is spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on an unconstitutional war on Libya, the administration took the occasion of every taxpayer’s favorite day of the year, April 15, to announce that it is going to send $25 million worth of “nonlethal” aid to the rebels fighting against the regime of Col. Moammar Gadhafi.

Truth, it has been said, is the first casualty of war. The latest evidence of the veracity of this saying: The United States supposedly stopped attacking Libya on April 4, yet since that time U.S. aircraft have continued to fly over the beleaguered nation and assault its air defenses.

It’s official: When it comes to foreign policy, Barack Obama’s first term is really George W. Bush’s third.

For all his talk about cutting deficits, President Barack Obama seems strangely unconcerned about the massive amount of money his unconstitutional war on Libya is costing the American taxpayer. How massive, you ask? Try $600 million for just the first week.

Add Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) to the list of those who think President Barack Obama’s imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya is deserving of impeachment. Last weekend Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio, picture left) said that he believes Obama’s war is “an impeachable offense” because, as he wrote in a letter to colleagues, “the President committed the U.S. to military intervention without consulting Congress, in clear subversion of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which gives only Congress the power to declare war.” Paul’s spokesperson, Rachel Mills, confirmed to the Daily Caller that Paul agrees with Kucinich on this point.