Former Aides Run Interference for Obama

Target critics, journalists

A week after leaving the White House earlier this year, David Plouffe took to his new Twitter account to announce that he thinks Karl Rove's credibility is shot and his understanding of the electorate is "stupefyingly" dumb.

Tommy Vietor, another Obama ex-White House veteran, hit Twitter to offer his own measured critique about a tweet by Sen. John McCain concerning a new documentary on the Benghazi attacks —"disgusting, shameless," Vietor said.

And former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau evidently didn't think much about a tweet from columnist Ron Fournier of National Journal that compared White House aide Dan Pfeiffer to Rush Limbaugh. "You're joking, right?" Favreau tweeted in response. "Otherwise, you've just won the Nobel Prize of False Equivalence."

Twitter is aflame these days with high-ranking former Obama aides. Liberated from any official constraints, overflowing with opinions and no small measure of old resentments at political foes and the news media, they are letting the world know what they really think — and seemingly enjoying themselves to no end while doing so.