Three big scandals. Two Marine umbrellas. And a non-salute en route to Memorial Day. Plus more visual evidence from 12 days of scandal town.
Both House Speaker John Boehner and President Barack Obama agree that the sequester will be a disaster for the economy. But Republicans and Democrats aren't allowed to agree on anything, so, with eight days before $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts kick in, a chorus of conservatives have emerged to ask, what's so bad about sequestration?
President Obama is giving interviews to eight local TV news reporters to highlight the effect of the sequester on their cities, again snubbing the poor White House correspondents who are routinely denied access to the president, as Politico vividly chronicled earlier this week. And what are these lucky local news reporters doing with their precious access? Tweeting about Bo, the dog.
A lot of people are noticing that Marco Rubio's immigration reform plan has a lot in common with President Obama's immigration reform plan, which Rubio denounced as "half-baked." This is not good for Rubio.
How worried is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell about protecting his Senate seat in 2014? According to a new attack ad published today by McConnell's campaign staff, very worried.
It is starting to look less likely that Congress will reach a deal that prevents automatic spending cuts from taking effect March 1, so politicians are finding the strength to accept the things they cannot change, and change the things they cannot accept. That means accepting the sequester but changing who gets blamed for it.
With 48-hours of spin and Republican criticism on its side, the Obama administration continued to back away from an immigration plan that leaked over the weekend.
Although Sen. Marco Rubio trashed President Obama's immigration plan, it is not clear what the major differences are between the two proposals, especially for one of Rubio's most important audiences, conservatives.
A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.
The White House Press Pool made a stink on Sunday after they were refused access to President Obama's golf game with Tiger Woods in Florida.
Things seemed to escalate quickly there. After a copy of the White House's back-up immigration reform bill leaked, Marco Rubio moved quickly to shoot down the bill's proposals to ensure his bipartisan effort remained the favored method to get this deal done.
In a speech given two weeks ago in Las Vegas, the President gave the first preview of his immigration reform back up plan. If Senate or Congress can't get the job done, he has a bill waiting for them to vote on. We now know what, exactly, makes up a chunk of the President's proposals.
Yesterday The Atlantic Wire published a post titled "Hillary Clinton Is Running for President, OK?" suggesting that the traditional campaign kabuki, in which we all pretend there is reasonable doubt that someone is running for president right up until the moment the words "I'm running" leave a candidate's mouth, is needless.
When President Obama played with pre-school children in Decatur, Georgia on Valentine's Day, one "brave" little girl was not impressed by the president, or so Daily Intel's Dan Amira would have you believe.
Republican senators filibustered Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel on Thursday (though they'd rather you didn't call it that) for one reason, but they're hoping the delay gives them enough time to find another reason to block his nomination.
During a speech about preschool education on Thursday, President Obama jokingly suggested that his older daughter was going on dates. But who might she be dating? And what to do on the date? Let's speculate.
In a speech to promote his State of the Union education plan, President Obama framed it in a way to appeal to Republicans: It saves money. But the question is not whether it's a good idea so much as whether it can pass the Republican-controlled House.
President Obama spoke of many issues and challenges facing the nation in his State of the Union, but, having grown up among the bridge-and-tunnel crowd in Central Jersey, there was one crisis that stood out for Daily Show host Jon Stewart's: the crumbling infrastructure of those bridges and tunnels.
What with all of the political drama in this year's Best Picture crop — and Michelle Obama hosting the kid from Beasts of the Southern Wild at the White House — we couldn't help but wonder which films our top politicians would like to see win.
Insisting that raising the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour would cost jobs, House Speaker John Boehner has already rejected President Obama's State of the Union call to bring it up from $7.25. Here's research that says otherwise.
The president's gun request in the State of the Union was memorable, but it was also just that — a very, very modest request for Congress to vote, amidst a wish list that otherwise called for an ambitious agenda. Why just a vote? Because the deeper conversation has changed.
He has now given five State of the Union addresses (four officially), and if you watch them all in order you can witness the subtle development in his approach to the speech — one that also mirrors the development of his presidency, and his exercise of power.
David Ignatius on Obama's optimistic State of the Union, Maureen Dowd on Rubio's response, James Hohmann on issues that should concern Democrats, Fred Kaplan on the President's vague foreign policy, and Simon Jenkins on the senselessness of sanctions.
Although we already knew a lot of Obama was going to say in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, critics didn't waste a second to pounce on the president when he said it.
This was a very consequential sip of water, given that Rubio's lines about "big government" were quite familiar, as was his biography. Let's break down the one moment America may remember about Tuesday night more than Obama's gun refrain.
"I pray we can come together to solve our problems, because the choices before us could not be more important," Rubio said following the President's State of the Union address. Our word cloud indicates that "government" and "more" were frequent.
Here's the speech, focusing on the economy — particularly job creation, by way of manufacturing, energy, infrastructure, and housing — and a broader theme of citizenship. We've got a word cloud, too. (Hint: There's a lot about jobs.)
The most powerful moment of the State of the Union on Tuesday night came when President Obama said the victims of gun violence — people like Gabby Giffords and the family of Hadiya Pendleton — deserve a vote on gun control measures. But there were many more moments and issues than that. Re-live them all here.
You can bet on two things from President Obama's State of the Union: post-speech hype about how he's making an aggressive case for liberal policies, followed by liberal disappointment at Obama's policies.
Some details have leaked about the President's big spring trip to Israel, including a planned dinner with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a stop so the President can check out Israel's rocket intercepting Iron Dome.
North Korea's latest show of nuclear might has many conservatives fuming over the Obama administration's supposed weakness on nuclear proliferation. But what exactly do they expect the President to do?
Here, from the big economic push to other pressing issues and Obama's general attitude from the podium, is what the talking heads and editorial boards are betting on. It actually serves as a nice outline for the kind of speech the White House has promised — even if you never can trust a pundit.
In an interview with CBS, Cheney said that the drone program is the only portion of Obama's foreign policy that he agrees with — indeed, that he thinks it's a "good policy."
We already know how President Obama will describe the state of our union in his State of the Union address Tuesday: strong. Here's how the traditional line became a cliché.
Should we be concerned that Ted Nugent — the paleo-rocker who said he'd be "dead or in jail" by this time if President Obama were reelected — is attending tomorrow's State of the Union address?
In a reversal, the Obama administration is considering signing an sign executive order that would protect gay federal contractors from workplace discrimination.
President Obama will unveil a set of concrete proposals in his State of the Union speech Tuesday, and as in his inaugural address last month, he's expected to sound pretty liberal.
Eleanor Clift on State of the Union stakes, Andrew Brown on the pope's resignation, Marc Thiessen on Jack Lew's offshore investments, Connie Rice on the LAPD's culture, and Fouad Ajami on drones.
Yes, that sounds like a parody movie trailer. But unfortunately this is a real story based on real things that happened in real life instead of brilliant satire. The Washington Post has an amazing story about how an Obama lawn sign ignited an intense legal battle in a Virginia neighborhood.
If you're ever in a meeting with the leader of the free world, you know it's important. Or rather, you better show it's important.
President Obama previewed the disappointment that members of his party are almost destined to eventually feel in a speech at the House Democratic Issues Conference on Thursday in Leesburg, Virginia.
After a blog alleged that she didn't vote in this election, Dunham took to Twitter to clear up the situation. Maybe.
Both Republicans and Democrats cast themselves as deficit cutters during the presidential election, but the new reality from the anual CO report is further evidence that no one in Washington — not Obama or Boehner — will take credit for the sequester anymore.
After being heavily criticized for not visiting the State of Israel during his first term, the second-term President Obama will be making a trip there very soon.
The President did, in fact, suggest Congress kick the can at a White House briefing, saying that his fiscal-cliff deals are "very much" still on the table.
Everyone is anxious about the "white paper" that finally begins to detail the Obama administration's opinons on targeted assassination, but what seems to have even more people worried on the morning after — and less than 48 hours from John Brennan's confirmation hearing — is what's missing from that argument.
On Monday we saw two very different ideas for how President Obama might achieve his second-term policy goals — one in a campaign-style speech on gun control in Minneapolis and another in the recorded gripes of Democrats on Capitol Hill in Politico. Which one has the best chance of working?
In an attempt to spin forward his gun-violence proposals while on the road and away from the rancor of a fired-up Washington, President Obama said in a speech in Minneapolis that legislators need to adopt new measures in order to prevent further gun violence.
As President Obama takes to the road to sell a "comprehensive set of commonsense ideas" about gun violence, Senate Democrats are reportedly working on a gun-control bill that will include all of the his policy proposals — except the one that might be the biggest.
As the possibility of destructive cyberwarfare inches towards reality, the government is scrambling to figure out who holds the keys to America's malware arsenal. Obviously, it's President Obama.
Should the Scouts be open to gays? It's a clear-cut issue for the President. "Yes," he said during his pre-Super Bowl interview with CBS's Scott Pelley, in which he also spoke out about women in combat, raising rates, and, you know, football.
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