President Obama's speech on counterterrorism on Thursday won rave reviews among some who seemed to see it as a return of the liberal constitutional law professor who ran for president in 2008. But while the tone might have been refreshing, maybe we should wait to see Obama's follow-through?
Both President Barack Obama and Conan O'Brien decided to cast Hollywood versions of D.C. at the White House Correspondents' Dinner this year. Obama's version was directed by Steven Spielberg, O'Brien's starred "Tan Mom" as John Boehner. Watch their full speeches here.
Long portrayed as technologically aloof, the end of the comeback week gives us a portrait of Bush fully in thrall to consumer technology, leveraging the iPad not to check and respond to email but to express himself in art. Yes, he learned how to paint on an app.
As president Obama spoke to Planned Parenthood on Friday, Fox News aired footage of the Kermit Gosnell trial. The coverage is a perfect representation of the split in the abortion debate: on one side, a triumphant march of progress for women, and on the other side, a fixation on late-term abortion nationally. Less covered is how some states are working to stop all abortions.
What do President Obama, the Russian mob, Tobey Maguire, hedge funds, Olympic figure skaters, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Bill Clinton, A-Rod, France, and the "London Whale" have in common? They're all connected (more or less) to a complicated web of money, celebrity, politics, and illegal poker that may have cost one innocent millionaire an ambassadorship in France.
The odds are good that you didn't know about yesterday's House hearing on climate change or a new video from OFA. The urgency with which scientists look at the issue has still not been translated to Capitol Hill — or to the rest of America.
The opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library brought together all of the living presidents in his honor. Which prompted us to wonder: At what point were the most presidents alive at once?
In a moment that's become almost as big a presidential milestone as the inauguration itself, today George W. Bush celebrates the opening of his presidential library and museum, which is opening the floodgates for historical judgements on his eight years in office.
The First Dad told the Today show Wednesday that he can stop the First Daughters from getting tattoos... by getting his own, and taking it viral. But if history has taught us anything, kids are always going to find a way to screw over their folks. Like so, perhaps.
After senators filibustered a gun background checks bill, President Obama gave an angry speech, promising that "we can still bring about meaningful changes that reduce gun violence so long as the American people don't give up on it." But according to a new Washington Post/ Pew Research Center poll, the American people are kind of over it.
On its front page today, The New York Times criticizes President Obama for failing to hold Democrats who voted against the gun compromise accountable. But the president's bigger challenge may have been overestimating their empathy.
A few days after The New York Times published a rather arresting column written by an inmate staging a hunger strike, 25 percent more prisoners have joined the protest.
Like most presidents, part of Barack Obama's job has always been to speak up for the nation in times of grief, a role he's become all too familiar with in the last year. In addition to his remarks in Boston, we have gathered some of his previous speeches — three of which followed mass shooting — that are the best examples of his knack for rhetoric in times of crisis.
There was mass fury at the Senate for filibustering a weakened gun background checks bill that had been driven by the outrage that one man with an AR-15 could kill 20 schoolchildren. What's more interesting is whether all that rage will end up changing anything on its own.
Federal agents took a man from Corinth, Mississippi into custody on Wednesday evening under suspicion of sending letters covered in ricin to the president and Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker.
As part of a tense day in Washington, the FBI reported that a second ricin-contaminated envelope sent to a mail processing facility in Washington, D.C. Its intended recipient appears to have been the president. At another point, two Senate office buildings were locked down, one due to a person who apparently was carrying suspicious envelopes. Here's everything you need to know.
No one wants to politicize the Boston Marathon bombing. But a political opponent politicizing the Boston Marathon bombing? Well, that might be useful!
President Obama did call the bombing of the Boston marathon "terrorism" in a brief statement on the event Monday, saying instead, "We still do not know who did this or why. People shouldn't jump to conclusions before we have all the facts."
After years of long hours and low-ish pay, many of President Obama's old aides are cashing in on their political connections. But as The New Republic's Noam Scheiber explains, there's some squabbling among the Obama alumni network over who looks like a crass sellout and who's a classy sellout.
President Obama may want to think twice about that sequester pay cut. His tax returns, released Friday, show that his main source of income -- which used to be royalties from the sale of his books -- is now his presidential salary.
Buried on page 51 of President Obama's budget proposal is a short section titled "Reform TVA" — where "reform" is likely to mean "privatize." It's the quiet beginning of a late chapter in the story of the New Deal, made necessary in part by Obama himself.
Senators have come up with compromises on immigration and gun control even though Washington was supposed to be paralyzed and President Obama's agenda was supposed to be pretty much dead, smothered by the fiscal cliff, the sequester, and the NRA.
Opponents criticize Wednesday's background check compromise, suggesting it wouldn't have prevented several high profile mass shootings. Indeed, of the 30 incidents since 2003 that we looked at, the new deal would quite possibly only have stopped one.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a confirmation hearing on Wednesday for an open spot on U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. — and it could open the door for the next Supreme Court nominee. Here's how.
Many Republicans were unaware that Obama's been offering chained CPI for a while. It seems they were also unaware that Grover Norquist, conservatives' No. 1 anti-tax activist and an important GOP ally for decades, opposes chained CPI as a bad deal and a tax increase.
By offering to raise taxes and cut entitlement spending at the same time, the new formal budget proposal from the Obama administration should sufficiently upset just about everyone who will have to vote on it.
It's always fun to watch President Obama go to music-related events, most especially because there's usually a good chance that he might get on stage to sing. Tuesday night was one of those nights. Except he didn't sing a thing!
President Obama, tired and clearly emotional, made another pitch for Congress to act on new gun restrictions Monday evening in Connecticut. His task: to translate the fury and urgency of the boisterous crowd in front of him into action in DC.
The 29,503,030 people who follow Barack Obama's Twitter account might see his picture, see his name, see that little blue verified account badge and think they're following the President — but it's not him.
President Obama called California Attorney General Kamala Harris to say he was sorry for calling her the hottest attorney general in all the land, White House press secretary Jay Carney explained Friday afternoon, after a ton of criticism that Obama acted like an unenlightened bro.
The proposals will include cuts to Medicare and Social Security and tax increases... which doesn't change what the president was offering Republicans last fall — but it does mean pundits will declare Obama is offering a serious budget for serious times, DOA or not.
President Obama revealed his secret adherence to fascist beauty standards when he praised the female California attorney general for being, like, mad hot at a DNC fundraiser Thursday afternoon in Atherton, California.
President Obama's trip to Denver today to lift up Colorado as "a model of what's possible" on gun control in D.C. The interesting comparison, though, isn't why Congress won't stand up to the NRA — that answer is obvious — but what happened to the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, the state's gun lobby that is, if anything, more radical than the NRA.
In a measure of solidarity with those affected by the budget-slashing government sequestration, President Obama is giving up 5 percent of his salary for rest of the year, which is almost as admirable and sensible as a mansion-owner shutting off his marble fountains during a drought.
The economy is doing well, but could be doing better. So President Obama is reportedly reaching for a old idea that didn't work so well the last time.
Kid President welcomed the real-life president and first family to the makeshift stage during the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, which is always high on the pomp and silliness, but not always quite this awkward. Also: terrifying Easter Bunny.
Speaking Friday in Miami, President Obama called for $21 billion in new national infrastructure investment. This is a strong break from past years — when he called for the creation of an infrastructure bank in the autumn.
The president's environmental moves, like today's announcement on gasoline emissions, seem to favor small dial-turns focused on economics and short-term health improvements. It's environmental smallball — and environmentalists may have given up on hoping for a home run.
Depsite rumors to the contrary, President Obama isn't giving up on gun violence. In an event at the White House on Thursday morning, the President averred that he continued to toil under the memory of the mass shooting in Newtown.
There are a few lessons for Washington in the new ABC/Washington Post poll released today. One is that (non-Republican) people still like Obama. The second is that one option for Congress to turn its horrible ratings around would be for it to actually do something.
Mark Warner became the latest member of the Senate to announce his support for gay marriage Monday afternoon — and perhaps the last to do so with any effectiveness. In the recent history of buzzer-beaters for political benefit, others have not been quite so advantageous on the once hot-button issue.
In a quiet news statement sent out at 3 p.m. on a Friday, the Obama administration officially withdrew the nomination of Caitlin Halligan to sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals' D.C. Circuit, replacing John Roberts. The withdrawal leaves the court with only seven of its eleven members in place — and reemphasizes the problem of slow or blocked judicial nominations.
The civil rights movement wanted to integrate black people into American society. Obama, most Israelis, and Palestinians want a two-state solution. That takes more than changing hearts and minds of average people.
What's important about the NCAA tournament isn't who wins the championship. What's important is who gets humiliated by their embarrassing picks. For too long, celebrities and reporters have been immune to that humiliation. No longer.
Barack Obama knows how to work a crowd. While speaking to a group of 600 college students at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem, the President was briefly heckled by a lonestudent speaking in Hebrew. Here's the video of Obama's reaction.
President Obama, members of Congress, and their aides will have to enroll in Obamacare's health exchanges next year — Congress because they legally have to, and Obama because he publicly promised to.
On the same Barack Obama made his first visit to the West Bank as President and held talks with Mahmoud Abbas, militants in Gaza fired rockets into southern Israel, underlining the divisions still faced between not just Israelis and Palestinian, but within the two factions.
President Obama faced a simple question: Did the dueling accusations about chemical weapons in Syria cross his supposed line to engage or not? Well, in a press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu, he said the line is still there, and chemical weapons are a "game changer" — he's just not sure who crossed it yet. But he's "deeply skeptical" the opposition did.
The President of the United States is in Israel, in case you hadn't heard. How did he spend his first presidential afternoon in the Holy Land? Let's take a visual tour, with vacation slides!
Did Syria use chemical weapons on its own people? If the verdict comes back "yes," then what? Will U.S. troops invade or bomb the country, as Republicans have suggested? Give the rebels all the guns they need? Welcome to the land of no consequences.
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