Former Weather Underground co-founder Bill Ayers told Real Clear Politics that President Obama should be tried for war crimes.

Said Ayers: “Every president in this century should be put on trial. Every one of them goes into an office dripping with blood and then adds to it. And, yes, I think that these are war crimes. I think that they’re acts of terror.”

Charlie Rose has a great interview with President Obama at the White House in which they covered Syria, Iran, the NSA leaks controversy and more.

The Week has five takeaways from the sit down.

President Obama rejected comparisons between himself and Vice President Dick Cheney, who strongly backed similar surveillance efforts in the Bush administration and has defended Obama’s continuation of them, Politico reports.

Said Obama: “Some people say, ‘Well, you know, Obama was this raving liberal before. Now he’s, you know, Dick Cheney.’ Dick Cheney sometimes says, ‘Yeah, you know? He took it all lock, stock, and barrel.'”

A new CNN/ORC poll finds President Obama’s approval rating dropped eight percentage points over the past month, to 45%, the president’s lowest rating in more than a year and a half.

Said pollster Keating Holland: “The drop in Obama’s support is fueled by a dramatic 17-point decline over the past month among people under 30, who, along with black Americans, had been the most loyal part of the Obama coalition.”

A judge ruled that two defendants in military sexual assault cases cannot be punitively discharged, if found guilty, because of “unlawful command influence” derived from comments made by President Obama, Stars and Stripes reports.

“The judge’s pretrial ruling means that if either defendant is found guilty, whether by a jury or a military judge, they cannot receive a bad conduct discharge or a dishonorable discharge.”

National Journal: “It was Ronald Machen’s office which issued the warrant request for the emails and phone records of James Rosen, the Fox News reporter caught up in that leak about North Korea’s nuclear program. It’s his office that got those Associated Press phone records. And there’s a chance an Edward Snowden trial, if there is one, could end up in Machen’s jurisdiction.”

Extraordinary security provisions for President Obama trip to sub-Saharan Africa this month — “which will cost the government tens of millions of dollars” — are outlined in a confidential document obtained by the Washington Post.

“Any journey by the president, such as one scheduled next week for Northern Ireland and Germany, is an immense and costly logistical challenge. But the trip to Africa is complicated by a confluence of factors that could make it one of the most expensive of Obama’s tenure, according to people familiar with the planning.”

“The president and first lady had also planned to take a Tanzanian safari as part of the trip, which would have required the president’s special counterassault team to carry sniper rifles with high-caliber rounds that could neutralize cheetahs, lions or other animals if they became a threat… But the White House canceled the safari Wednesday after inquiries from The Post about the trip’s purpose and expense.”

“A top Syrian rebel commander has issued a desperate plea for weapons from Western governments to prevent the fall of his forces in Aleppo, pushing the Obama administration to decide quickly whether to agree to arm rebels for the first time or risk the loss of another rebel stronghold just days after the regime’s biggest victory,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Meanwhie, Politico reports Bill Clinton told Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) he agrees that Obama should act more forcefully to support anti-Assad rebels in Syria, saying the American public elects presidents and members of Congress “to see down the road” and “to win.”

Washington Post: “The list of prominent news people with close White House relations includes ABC News President Ben Sherwood, who is the brother of Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, a top national-security adviser to President Obama. His counterpart at CBS, news division president David Rhodes, is the brother of Benjamin Rhodes, a key foreign-policy specialist. CNN’s deputy Washington bureau chief, Virginia Moseley, is married to Tom Nides, who until earlier this year was deputy secretary of state under Hillary Rodham Clinton.”

“Further, White House press secretary Jay Carney’s wife is Claire Shipman, a veteran reporter for ABC. And NPR’s White House correspondent, Ari Shapiro, is married to a lawyer, Michael Gottlieb, who joined the White House counsel’s office in April.”

A new Des Moines Register poll in Iowa finds that just sevens months after Iowans rallied behind Obama to help ensure his re-election, 54% disapprove of the job he’s doing a president. That’s his worst rating in Iowa in his 4½ years in office.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) told Bloomberg that Attorney General Eric Holder’s ability to perform his duties has been hurt by recent scandals and that he should consider resigning.

Said Manchin: “Whenever you feel that you have lost your effectiveness or may be losing your effectiveness to the detriment of the job that you do. You have to evaluate that and make a decision. And I think we’re at the time now where decisions have to be made.”

A New York Times editorial: “The administration has now lost all credibility. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) told The Hill that he has not received a phone call from President Obama in four years.

In 2009, Obama “basically had Grassley on speed dial, calling him frequently during negotiations over an overhaul of the nation’s healthcare system.” But when the senator said he would not back the president’s plan, the phone calls stopped.

President Obama “has pivoted back to playing hardball with Republicans after a spring spent attempting to woo Senate Republicans over collegial dinners and White House visits,” Roll Call reports.

“With GOP lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol bringing him heat over a variety of administration missteps and scandals, the president seems to have made a calculated decision to go on offense on judges, on student loans and with fresh veto threats on appropriations bills.”

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds recent controversies surrounding the IRS and other government agencies “have sown doubts about the honesty of the Obama administration, but most people don’t hold the president personally responsible for the agency actions.”

“A majority of poll respondents, some 55%, said IRS scrutiny of conservative groups raised some level of doubt about the administration’s ‘overall honesty and integrity’… Moreover, a plurality of 43% in the poll said IRS scrutiny of conservative groups was part of a widespread effort by those in government, compared with 29% who saw it as a case of a few officials acting on their own.”

A new Bloomberg poll finds 47% of Americans say they don’t believe Obama on the IRS controversy, compared with 40% who say he is being truthful,

Obama adviser David Plouffe brought up decades-old allegations that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) stole cars and burned down his own business because “he had no choice,” Politico reports. “There was simply no other Obama aide with the stature or street cred with the Democratic base to confront Issa — even though he was a key player in the administration during the period covered by Issa’s inquiry.”

“His decision to trash Issa in such a personal way stunned Plouffe admirers who privately fret about poking such an ambitious and unpredictable adversary in the eye, fearing it will only reinforce the California Republican’s determination to prove that the orders to scrutinize conservative groups came from high-ranking administration officials.”

Said Plouffe: “If he behaves himself I am happy to never think about him again. I do think it’s highly relevant for the media to examine Congress’s top cop both in terms of how he is handling the current situation but also his background. He is a man in the spotlight — the American people should and will be eager for more info on who the inquisitor is.”

Some of President Obama’s political appointees “are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages,” the AP reports.

“The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees’ email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.”

The College Republican National Committee released a new postmortem on the November elections which offers a searing indictment of the GOP “brand” and the major challenges the party faces in wooing young voters, Politico reports.

“It’s not a pretty picture. In fact, it’s a ‘dismal present situation,’ the report says.”