In further comments to the media on May 17, following a meeting in Sochi with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed Western criticism of Moscow for supplying weapons to Syria's government.

The Obama White House continues to hunker down and fend off the growing scandals that hit the Administration beginning last week. But some leading Democrats are now already breaking ranks and warning that Obama is in deep trouble.

Sara Hall Ingram, the head of the IRS tax-exempt office from 2009 to 2012 — the time that the targeting of "Tea Party," "Patriot," "912," and other conservative organizations was at its height — has been promoted to be the lead enforcer of mandatory health insurance for Obamacare.

Rep. Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has written to Lois Lerner, the Director of the Exempt Organizations Division of the IRS, demanding documents and communications on the targeting of rightwing political groups. In his 5-page letter, Issa charged Lerner with false past testimony before the committee.

Barack Obama's feigned outrage over the IRS abuses had no effect on stopping questions on Capitol Hill, as was demonstrated in the May 17th hearing by the House Ways and Means Committee — the first of many hearings to come.

The Austrian government has issued an official position paper, now circulating among EU member states, in opposition to the British-French proposal for lifting the arms embargo in Syria. Dated May 13, the document is a cogent summation of the reasons why the lifting of the EU embargo would be politically and legally unacceptable.

First, the political reasons:

Over the past few months a debate has emerged over whether or not the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), passed by Congress in the aftermath on Sept. 18, 2001 in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, is adequate for how the so-called war on terror is now being waged by the Obama Administration.

As the first hearings on the IRS scandal begin today at the House Ways and Means Committee, the aura of Watergate around the administration continues to spread. Scheduled to appear is Steven Miller, the acting Commissioner who will be replaced as of May 22, by the controller of the OMB, Daniel Werfel.

The scandal surrounding the IRS's targetting of anti-Obama organizations is expanding so rapidly that the White House's lies can't keep up with it. Some of the past 24 hours' new developments:

"The dam of solid Democratic solidarity has collapsed," Politico announces today, citing Benghazi, the IRS scandal, and the DOJ's sweeping subpoening of Associated Press phone records. "Democrats are privately befuddled by the White House's flat-footed handling of this P.R. and legal mess, blaming a combination of bad timing, hubris and communications ineptitude."