this week on "the journal editorial report," the administration indicates it won't meet its deadline for the health care website. as lawmakers head home for the holidays and face angry constituents. plus, a record settlement with jpmorgan has the justice department crowing but who are the real winners in this $13 billion payout? and as the country commemorates the 50th anniversary of the kennedy assassination, we will examine new evidence of a castro connection. welcome to "the journal editorial report." i'm david asman in for paul

gigot. the obama administration all but admitted this week it will not meet its own deadline to get heal healthcare.gov up and running. softening the november 30th deadline, saying the website will be a, quote, work of constant improvement. another official telling congress a whopping 30% of the online federal exchange still hasn't been built. so how in the world will supporters of obama care defend the new laws? the deadline comes and goes. as those policy cancellations keep rolling in. particularly as they had home and mingle with unhappy constituents during the holidays. something rubio says may be a game changer. >> this law cannot be saved. the question is is how long will it take for democrats to realize that and cooperate in that? so far, the upper echelons of the democratic party, they're still being very stubborn about

it but my prediction is check back in eight weeks. >> "wall street journal" columnist and deputy editor dan henninger. washington columnist january esrel. and dan freeman. this is going to be quite a sight. when they face their constituents. i'm thinking back to 2010 and those tea party town halls. a redo of that? >> yes, probably, but the people who are there are not going to be members of the tea party, they're just going to be average americans. they're going to come in and they're going to be very upset about the stories that they have heard of people having their insurance policies is canceled. either personally or friends. there's been enough of them that virtually everybody, all of us knows someones who had their insurance canceled. they're going to demand these democratic lawmakers explain what the heck they thought they were doing. it's going to be very difficult for them to defend the law right now. so i think the more that they get pressed -- one example, dianne feinstein, senator from california, went back home

recently, came to washington and said she's signing on to governor mary landrieu's bill. she's from a safe seat. she must have really got it in the neck back in california and that's going to happen all over the country. >> you have these democratic fixes. democrats admitting there are mistakes. but that we've got the fixes that are going to work. are constituents going to believe them? >> those are exactly what you suggest, they're cover. so the landrieu bill would will require insurers to continue offering the plan. the kay/hagan bill that will extend enrollment. people are rapidly realizing those aren't going to work. they're not going to offer any real release. if democrats did such a phenomenal job of creating a law to destroy the insurance markets, there are no quick fixes. and so they can talk about all this but you've got insurers saying they can't comply with rules like that in such a short period of time. and so you are not going to have any democrats going down and

convincing people that this is the way that things are going to get better. it's just not going to happen. >> particularly, james, after you've seen these very public pratfalls. you've seen all of these democrats falling on their face trying to prove that the thing works when it doesn't work. in fact, you had sebelius down in florida for a photo op, supposedly to show how smooth things were operating. take a look at what happened. >> i think it's great that this is happening. >> wow. it's been a long time coming. >> yeah. >> -- temporarily down. >> uh-oh. >> it's okay, it will come back. that happens every day. >> so, james, you know, they try to put the best face on. they have a photo op where everybody's supposed to cooperate, make it look good, and they fall flat on their face. >> that happens every day. maybe they were talking about government in general or obama care specifically or the website. but i'm glad you noted in the opening there that much of the system hasn't been built. it hasn't had the chance to fail

yet because much of it doesn't exist. but i thought the most interesting moment this week is when the president said at our "wall street journal" ceo council that obama care needs to be remarketed and rebranded. think he still doesn't understand the underlying architecture will not work. even after they get the website up and running, whenever that is, this system of throwing people out of insurance and giving them more expensive policies they don't want, is not sustainable. >> that's the point, dan, is that really the website is the smallest of their problems. it's the policy cancellations. the sky-high preyums. those are going to last. those are much more powerful. >> those are not going away at all, david. one of the things we haven't mentioned here that's very, very important, james alluded to it, was barack obama sits s at thep of this mess. two things are happening to him. his credibility is being eroded. the competence of his white house and his administration is being eroded.

for a president, those are two very dangerous things. to have your credibility and competence so-called into question as this. now, if these democrats go back at thanksgiving and get into as much trouble as they inevitably are going to, they're going to come back to washington and start deciding we've got to put some distance between us and this white house. you may be seeing the development of a streveto proof majority to delay the individual mandate for a year. >> we talked about the danger for democrats. let's talk about the opportunities for republicans. you had a terrific piece in friday's journal about the opportunities for republicans. spell that out for us. >> there's a debate going on right now within the republican caucus about whether or not they should just sit back and continue to let this health care bill fail. or whether or not now is the opportunity to get out there, which is certainly my view, and start talking about free market and innovative health care, reforms they would want to do, making very clear that it's not their goal to go back to the

system before obama care which was not perfect by any means but that they had a lot of proposals that would both move us beyond the terrible mess that is obama care but also move us into a system that's far better than what we had already. and they've got the architecture for that. there's some reticence. people are worried about making themselves the story. but there's never been a time when the american public is better educated on the issues of obama care and where they have been more unhappy about what's happening in washington. and perhaps open to those sort of free market changes. >> the republicans have had experience in polling defeat out of the jaws of victory in the past. i mean, is it possible they could make some deal with democrats that may delay the opportunities they could gain from this? >> well, i think it will be a mistake for them to do any kind of deal to give democrats cover to pretend that the problem of obama care has been solved. any deal they do, then they sort of own the result. so even one-year delay in the mandate, while we sort of

welcome that from an individual freedom point of view, remember, that just hastened the economic collapse of these exchanges. that doesn't do anything for people whose insurance has been destroyed, for people who don't get the coverage they want. not a solution. >> great stuff, everybody. coming up next, it's been hailed as a victory for consumers with jpmorgan chase agreeing to pay a record $13 billion settlement over toxic mortgages, but you're not going to believe where that money is likely to go. support heart health. and your immune system. now there's new glucerna advance with three benefits in one. [ male announcer ] new glucerna advance. from the brand doctors recommend most.

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well, the obama justice department is taking a victory lap after this week's record $13 billion settlement with jpmorgan chase for its alleged role in the financial crisis and the sale of mortgagebacked securities. the left is applauding the agreement as a victory for surms and attorney general holder is promising it won't be the last. saying tuesday, quote, the size and scope of this resolution should send a clear signal that

the justice department's financial fraud investigations are far from over. now, where is all that money really going? is there a political motive underlying the administration's case against the bank? we're back with our guests. james, there's not a lot of sympathy out there with the people for banks. but i have trouble figuring out who the victim was in all this. >> yeah, i think the justice department had trouble too. you're right, a lot of americans angry about the wall street bailouts in 2008, i'm one of them. here, we have one of the banks that did not need a bailout, actually help the government take over banks that were failing because they made all the mistakes. and now the government suing jpmorgan for the crimes, or alleged offenses, of those ailing banks that they took over at the government's request. it's just incredible bad faith

on the part of the government. and i think you mentioned the political motives. we can get into that. this is a ceo who has criticized the dodd/frank financial law. >> that's an interesting point, mary, the fact is, this is the banker who runs jpmorgan chase, who has been very critical of the obama administration. >> yes, jamie dimon is one of the big ceos who have come out and spoken against them. the question is, where is this money going? $2 billion is going to the justice department to do with it what it likes. $7 billion to federal and state agencies. and $4 billion to consumers. now, are these consumers who were truly harmed? are these people who were paying their mortgages and foreclosed on? some very prom nent attorney generals who have political

aspirations. the new york attorney general. illinois attorney general. they're all getting payouts too. that's going to help their political careers. >> the question is whether a lot of money goes to these groups like acorn. we all remember acorn which of course doesn't exist anymore but the people are still around and they've forked other organizations and maybe they're going to get a piece of this pie. >> undoubtedly, they will. one of the things that morgan's being required to do is take measures to alleviate what the settlement calls urban blight. and they're going to have a monitor to decide whether they're doing enough. and if they don't, they'll have to give money to these groups. we're talking about making a bank an arm of the government, and though the banks are not sympathetic players for sure, we want them to function in the economy. they should be making loans. they should be doing the sort of things that they were created to do. and they're really pulling back because, as eric holder said,

there's going to be more of these prosecutions. as a result, the economy remains flat. and that also means that all of those people sitting out there in america without jobs and no prospects of being hired are not going to find an economy that creates jobs. >> is there a message here to banks out here, saying unless you do what we, the administration wants, you're going to get hit just like jpmorgan did. >> i think that's the message. the war on business continues. to try and answer your original question, where are these victims, they're very hard to find in the documents. but the 2 billion that mary mentioned to the justice department, this is allegedly for jpmorgan harming itself. >> interesting. >> by doing things that the justice department didn't like. >> yeah. >> i mean, it's -- trying to make sense of this case is -- it's just beyond weird. i think a negative signal for all those reasons we talked about for people who want the free economy to rebound. >> want the free economy to

rebound. it's an attack on capitalism broadly but it's also an attack on bank shareholders. this moment isn't coming out of the sky. this money is coming out of jpmorgan. many mutual funds across the country it is, if you're saving money in you're 401k, you've likely got jpmorgan in it. atta continue. >> so people who are saying what the government did is bad aren't even there anymore, it's the shareholders paying cost. >> i think we've made clear what is going on here is how to transfer capital out of the private sector and into the public sector. that's basically what it is. >> more cash for the government. when we come back, as the country commemorates the 50th anniversary of the kennedy assassination, more evidence of a cuban connection. did fidel castro play a role in

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friday marked 50 years since president kennedy was assassinated. it has sparked a new round of speculation about whether lee harvey oswald got a little help or at least inspiration for his murderous plot from a man kennedy wanted dead, cuban dictator fidel castro. our guest is an analyst who has been looking into all this. his new book explains a lot about what went on. good to see you. thank you for coming in. did castro know anything about lee harvey oswald before kennedy was shot? >> this is one of the big surprises that i uncovered doing the research on this book. fidel castro and cuban

intelligence had a thick file on oswald they began accumulating as early as 1959. that's the first year of the revolution. think of it also. thing of how shocking that is in the context of what castro said publicly about 30 hours after kennedy was killed. castro went on cuban television the day after kennedy's death and he told anybody who was listening, we never in our life heard of him, oswald, we never heard of him. it was a flagrant lie. cuban intelligence had plenty, plenty of evidence and knowledge of lee harvey oswald. >> particularly in those early days after the revolution. castro kept a very personal close hold on all of the intelligence information. so if the cuban intelligence had it, clearly fidel castro did, right? >> fidel was the supreme spy master. ran cuban intelligence almost out of his back pocket. it was a thing the public affairs activity that he loved

to do the most. >> all right, we know that oswald went to mexico in september of 1963 just a couple months before the assassination. why did he go there? what connection did he have with the cubans when he went there? >> he went to mexico because he wanted to defect to cuba. his wife believed -- this was the conclusion of the warren commission. it's not something exotic today by way of conclusions. he wanted to defect. he wanted to go and help fidel. he wanted to fight for the cuban revolution. he adored fidel and the cuban revolution. he went to mexico to get a visa. he never got it. he met at the cuban consulate with several cuban intelligence officers. >> including a woman he had an affair with or a fling with. >> she was mexican. she was the secretary at the consulate. he did apparently have an affair with this woman. >> you interviewed a lot of former spies.

cuban spies who have defected to the united states. now, on november 22nd, the day kennedy was assassinated, what happened? >> he was a young intelligence officer. he did communication interceptions intelligence. his assignment was to listen in on cia communications. langley, cia ships hovering off the coast. that was his exclusive assignment until the morning of november 22nd. he got orders that morning from his headquarters. focus instead on texas. kennedy of course was killed at 12:30 dallas time. i said, what time was it? he said, it was about three hours before kennedy was killed. >> this is a bombshell. this is an absolute bombshell. so it seems the cubansed an

advance notice? >> after doing extraordinary amounts of due diligence in terms of checking him out and checking out the story as best i could, i con clupded the same thing. yet the warren commission didn't seem to be interested. >> it overlooked the cuban angle but not very carefully. >> i think the white house feared that. i think the johnson white house feared that. i wouldn't call it the warren commission and the staff for covering up. the cia covered up and the fbi covered up. >> didn't johnson always believe cuban had a hand in it? >> he did, yes, he did. >> castro's secrets is the name of the book. thank you so much for coming in. we have to take one more break. [ woman 1 ] why do i cook? to share with family. [ woman 2 ] to carry on traditions.

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it is time for our hits and misses of the week. >> a big hit to the comedian bill cosby. went on jon stewart's daily show the other day and told jon stewart he really odd to stop all the cursing and swlearing h does in his public performances. cosby said cursing used to be a serious business but now people are doing it just to get laughs. boy, is bill cosby ever right. little kids are cursing because they learned it from adults. i think this is a really big hit for the great bill cosby. >> how did stewart take it? >> he said, i was speaking yiddish. >> he tried to make a joke of it and cosby wouldn't have it. >> i'm giving a big miss to the environmental protection agency which for 23 years employed a guy named john c. beale of the office of air and regulation. well, mr. beale pretended to be a cia agent for part of the time. he bilked the agency out of almost $1 million.

in 2008, he took six months off. nobody seemed to care. this is an agency where the inspector general says there's a, quote, absence of even basic control. these are the people who are supposed to be regulating vast swaths of our economy. what a mess. >> government at your service. and to the former "wall street journal" foreign correspondent everett j. martin died last week at the age of 87. ev covered many of the 20th century's most exciting and dangerous events. in vietnam, he tagged along with special forces guys behind enemy lines. he was kidnapped by bandits in the khyber pass and he dodged bullets in chile during the 1973 military coup. his talented attracted the likes of author john steinbeck who said of him, it is lean and sparse and alive and true. it has the keen and penetrating quality of good writing. but martin was not only a good writer, he was a good man, and

he will be sorely missed. that's it for this week's show. i'm david asman. thanks foring us. catch me weekday afternoons for "after the bell" on fox business network. security scares at two of the nation's biggest airports sparking panic and fear. just ahead of one of the becausist travel weeks of the year. >> good to see you. the disturbing incident in atlanta as well as los angeles turned out to be false alarms, but no one is taking any chances. this is the scene at l.a.x. last night after an anonymous call reporting a gunman led to the evacuation of two terminals. now, nerves on edge of course, as millions of americans take to the