Christie Slams Congress, Krugman Debates Scarborough, and More

On His Way:

The Senate Intelligence Committee has voted to confirm John Brennan to become the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The 12-3 vote came after the White House released to the panel all highly classified legal opinions justifying its controversial use of drone strikes to kill U.S. citizens suspected of being terrorists. “I am pleased the administration has made this information available. It is important for the committee to do its work and will pave the way for the confirmation of John Brennan to be CIA director,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the committee’s chairwoman, said in an email announcing that the memos had been made available. (Read more)

All Over the Place: Jeb Bush is switching positions on immigration reform yet again! The former Florida governor at first supported a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants but then reversed course in a book he wrote that was released Tuesday. He publicly revealed the switch Monday during an interview on NBC’s “Today,” which raised some eyebrows because the well-known pro-immigration Republican had previously backed such a position. Bush now says he’s open to letting undocumented immigrants become citizens so long as the route to citizenship doesn’t encourage future illegal immigration. To recap what happened: Jeb Bush basically did a complete 360 on the issue of immigration reform. (Read more)

Easy Does It: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has no love for Washington, D.C., something that should be interesting if he ever does decide to run for president. On Monday, the Republican slammed Congress and President Obama for failing to avoid the sequester which, in the governor’s mind, is something that the two sides should have dealt with quickly. “I don’t have the first damn idea of what they’re doing down there,” Christie said of what’s going on in D.C. “So I don’t understand it. I don’t understand why they haven’t fixed it already. Seems to me it should be pretty easy to fix. Real leadership would get this fixed.” (Read more)

No Room for Visitors: Planning on taking a tour of the White House in the near future? Think again. Thanks to the sequestration cuts, you will soon no longer be able to look around the president’s official residence. On Tuesday, the White House sent out an email saying it would be cancelling all tours beginning this weekend. According to the notice, “Due to staffing reductions resulting from sequestration, we regret to inform you that White House Tours will be canceled effective Saturday, March 9, 2013, until further notice. Unfortunately, we will not be able to reschedule affected tours. We very much regret having to take this action, particularly during the popular Spring touring season.” (Read more)

Video of the Day: New York Times columnist Paul Krugman admits he was not on his “A” game on Monday when he debated MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on a topic the Nobel Prize-winning economist should have excelled at—the economy. Krugman, who appeared alongside the former GOP congressman on “Charlie Rose” to continue a weeks-long argument about the country’s budget woes, compared his performance to that of Barack Obama during his first presidential debate against Mitt Romney. Here’s a couple of clips.