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By Zachary Karabell
$14.30
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By Annia Ciezadlo
26.00
$35
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White House / Pete Souza
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In an editorial published shortly after the announcement of a new deal to raise the debt ceiling, The New York Times calls the agreement a “nearly complete capitulation to the hostage-taking demands of Republican extremists.”
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White House / Pete Souza
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Republican and Democratic leaders hammered out a deal Sunday to raise the debt ceiling but, as details emerge, it seems that the compromise will be so unpopular in Congress that members from both parties will have to come together to pass it. (more)
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House Speaker's Office
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By Eugene Robinson — Conservatives are on a winning streak because they have a Big Idea that serves as an animating, motivating, unifying force. It happens to be a very bad idea, but it’s better than nothing—which, sadly, is what progressives have.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — What the country yearns for is moderation. What we hear about is the political center. But centrism has become the enemy of moderation.
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Flickr / ElvertBarnes
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U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., was arrested in front of the White House Thursday afternoon with about a dozen others while demonstrating against the deportation of illegal immigrants. Gutierrez is a supporter of the DREAM Act, which would allow students who are in the country illegally to become conditional permanent residents ... (more)
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By Eugene Robinson — There are basically two ways to reduce the debt as a percentage of GDP: Cut government spending or make the economy grow. The problem is that doing more of one means doing less of the other.
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Cliff (CC-BY)
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Senate Democrats have noticed that the president is dealing directly with House Republicans to reach a debt ceiling deal, one that may include trillions in cuts to Social Security and Medicare without any tax increases, and they’re not happy.
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By Joe Conason — Even the most extreme Republican partisans in the Senate seem to realize that their House colleagues, seized by some combination of ideology, madness and pig ignorance, are propelling the country and the world toward economic chaos.
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World Economic Forum / Monika Flueckiger (CC-BY-SA)
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By Richard Reeves — The big guy always knows what’s going on, which is part of how he got to be the big man (or woman).
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Robert Scoble (CC-BY)
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Fearing a tough confirmation fight, the Obama administration has decided that Elizabeth Warren will not head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Instead, the White House will nominate Richard Cordray, who was already selected to be the agency’s top enforcer and who, in his previous gig as Ohio’s attorney general, had put himself on the map by suing big banks. (more)
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By Joe Conason — Suddenly Republican leaders in Congress, after months of staring down the Democrats over a potentially disastrous debt default, began blinking so fast that they might have been signaling in Morse code.
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By Eugene Robinson — Do progressives care about reducing the national debt? Of course they do, no matter what the White House might believe.
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Flickr / SpeakerBoehner
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On Saturday evening, Speaker of the House John Boehner accepted less than he previously asked for in a deficit reduction plan. He slashed the GOP demand for total cuts from $4 trillion to, roughly, the $2 trillion suggested by the White House, and he tentatively agreed to some form of tax increase. (more)
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White House / Pete Souza
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By Eugene Robinson — Obama’s in-your-face attitude seems to have thrown Republicans off their stride. They thought all they had to do was convince everyone that they were crazy enough to force an unthinkable default on the nation’s financial obligations. Now they have to wonder whether Obama is crazy enough to let them.
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We don’t have the full picture yet on the lineup of candidates revving up to race for the White House in 2012, even from the GOP camp, which has already kicked into high campaigning gear. A certain governor of a big state ... (continued)
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AP / Lauren Victoria Burke
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For good reason, there has been serious hand-wringing over what to do about the ethical lapses of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. There is clear precedent for how to deal with the justice. Thomas could be forced off the bench.
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White House / Pete Souza
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The word surge implies a certain brevity, but according to Barack Obama’s withdrawal plans, announced Wednesday, it will end up taking two and a half years from the day the president ordered his Afghanistan surge to bring home those extra 33,000 U.S. troops sent to that country. U.S. involvement in the war ... (more)
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White House / Pete Souza
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Set your TiVos: The White House announced Monday that the president will deliver an Afghanistan speech Wednesday. Obama’s advisers have been debating how many of the more than 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan to bring home, with the military’s top brass pushing to keep most there indefinitely.
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White House / Pete Souza
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Back in 2009, President Obama was presented with two options for the war in Afghanistan: a troop surge favored by the military and a leaner counterterrorism strategy promoted by Vice President Joe Biden. He went with the surge, sending an additional 30,000 troops to fight in a war without purpose. (more)
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CIA
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In a story that harks back to the bad old days of intelligence abuses, a former CIA spook says he and another agency staffer were asked by Bush administration officials to dig up dirt on Mideast scholar, Iraq war critic and Truthdig columnist Juan Cole. (more)
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By Joe Conason — The current puppet play in Congress—where Republicans sponsored a bill to raise the nation’s debt ceiling only because they wanted to vote it down—would be funny, if only they weren’t risking economic disaster.
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whitehouse.gov
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In honor of the hard work they clearly feel they’ve done for the community, socially minded members of the Obama administration this week launched a special sitelet aimed at LGBT voters as an adjunct to the White House’s online hub.
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U.S. Navy / Petty Officer 1st Class Molly A. Burgess
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President Obama nominated Gen. Martin Dempsey on Monday to take over as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top military adviser to the president. Obama’s first choice for the job, according to The Washington Post, was Marine Gen. James Cartwright, who was reportedly denied the promotion for ... (more)
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AP/ Chris Pizzello
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The legendary musician tells Robert Scheer that his new album, including a song inspired by one of Scheer’s Truthdig columns, was written out of feeling frustrated, helpless and angry with current events.
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AP / Frank Franklin II
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This week we celebrate New York’s attorney general for refusing to let Wall Street off the hook. (More, including honorable mentions, after the jump).
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AP / Frank Franklin II
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By Robert Scheer — The fix was in to let Wall Street off the hook once and for all for its role in the Great Recession ... until last week when the attorney general of New York refused to go along.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By Nick Turse — If you follow the words, one Middle East comes into view; if you follow the weapons, quite another.
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White House / Pete Souza
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While the White House is promising that President Barack Obama’s big Middle East speech on Thursday will make news, Obama will avoid the biggest story this week: the inflamed Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which claimed a few more lives Sunday.
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And that’s just for this round between the two TV talkers—but who’s counting? Once again, Jon Stewart set his comic act aside for a more serious debate with Fox News’ leading loofah enthusiast Bill O’Reilly, this time over the White House’s shocking inclusion ... (more)
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Despite the collective outrage and alarm of noted hip-hop scholars Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, the artist known as Common turned up on Wednesday to perform a spoken word piece at a celebration of poetry at the White House. And lo, it was good.
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Wikipedia
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The White House’s invitation to hip-hop artist Common for a “Celebration of American Poetry” event Wednesday evening has angered conservatives who have worked themselves into a frenzy about the intellectual rapper’s lyrics.
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By Joe Conason — The performance of the president and those around him should permanently dispel the perennial right-wing slur against Democratic leaders as deficient in the strength and courage to defend our security.
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White House / Pete Souza
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There was just one camera in the room with President Obama when he announced the death of Osama bin Laden—the one beaming his address to television. Afterward, a group of still photographers was let in and the president went through the motions, walking to the podium and pretending to speechify for 30 seconds. (more)
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George W. Bush White House / Eric Draper
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The White House invited President Bush the second to join President Obama on his post-bin Laden tour of Ground Zero on Thursday, but W. skipped the ceremony in favor of maintaining a low profile.
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U.S. Government
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The latest version of events disagrees with our initial understanding of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s hideout. Most significantly, it appears that the al-Qaida leader was shot very quickly and without provocation (other than his terror résumé). So much for human shields. (more)
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U.S. Air Force / Tech. Sgt. Efren Lopez
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By William Pfaff — Killing Osama bin Laden leaves the United States facing two doors that open two ways into the future.
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White House / Lawrence Jackson
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Candidate Obama was a persistent critic of George W. Bush’s use of signing statements. Now he’s catching heat for using one to protect four of his appointees from Congress’ hatchet. (more)
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AP / Gerald Herbert
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By Narda Zacchino —
President Obama has asked Gen. Stanley McChrystal to oversee the administration’s new initiative to help military families. What a slap in the face to the nation’s highest-profile military family—that of Army Ranger Pat Tillman—on whom McChrystal heaped misery and disrespect.
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Announcing his second attempt at moving into the White House, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said America doesn’t have enough jobs because President Obama has never worked in the “real economy,” which, in Mitt’s case, means a venture capital company that laid off workers.
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By Eugene Robinson — That anyone could seriously imagine Donald Trump as president of the United States—the actual president—must reflect something deeper and more significant than the weakness of the Republican field.
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Quinn Dombrowski (CC-BY-SA)
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With the prospect of a government shutdown so real the White House has ordered government agencies to batten down the hatches, it’s hard to believe all this is over a few billion dollars. House Republicans are insisting on more cuts than President Obama has agreed to, and if both sides can’t get together by Friday ... (more)
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AP / Reed Saxon
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By Chris Hedges — The phrase consent of the governed has been turned into a cruel joke. There is no way to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs. Civil disobedience is the only tool we have left.
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The president made an effort Monday evening to explain, and perhaps to sell, his Libya strategy, saying “when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act.”
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White House / Pete Souza
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When Robert Gibbs left his White House post as the Obama administration’s chief communicator, he made some vague noises about his plans for the future beyond maintaining loose professional ties with his former boss. Now it looks as though he may join another powerful institution: Facebook.
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By Eugene Robinson — Is it just me? Am I the only one who’s utterly confused about the rationale, goals, tactics and strategy of the U.S.-led military intervention in Libya? Thought not.
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By Joe Conason — The paradoxes of Libya merely underline the broader problem that we face in the sudden democratic turmoil of the Mideast.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Leaders do not operate in a vacuum. When they make strategic adjustments, their opponents do too. President Obama has prompted just such a pivot by Republicans.
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By Richard Reeves — We are one lucky and better country to have, in a very short time, almost doubled our talent pool by opening our elite institutions and establishments to women.
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U.S. Navy MC2 Jesse B. Awalt
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By Eugene Robinson — Anyone looking for principle and logic in the attack on Moammar Gadhafi’s tyrannical regime will be disappointed.
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Does Anything Change in Los Angeles With Election of New Mayor?
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