Tagged: Petraeus Affair

Eight days after his re-election, President Obama today holds his first full-scale news conference in the East Room of the White House since March.

It's safe to think that the White House had hoped the focus would be on subjects such as the fiscal cliff, taxes, the economy and the president's thoughts on what he can get accomplished in his second term.

"No one should leap to any conclusions" about whether the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan did anything inappropriate when he was communicating with a Tampa socialite, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters today.

The FBI review of sensitive email messages between former CIA Director David Petraeus and his biographer-mistress Paula Broadwell has been raising big questions about Big Brother.

One of them: When can federal law enforcement review a person's private communications?

To Julian Sanchez, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, the real scandal over the Petraeus affair is not the extramarital sex, but the invasion of privacy.

Update at 11:30 a.m. ET: The Associated Press just moved a "bulletin" saying that according to a "senior defense official" the emails between Gen. John Allen and Jill Kelley were "flirtatious."

Update at 4:33 p.m. ET: NPR's Tom Bowman reports that U.S. officials tell him Paula Broadwell sent Gen. Allen messages warning him about Kelley. Allen, in turn, warned Kelley about those messages.

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