by Mark Silva and updated with president's statements.
It's snowing so hard on Washington today that they are grounding all buses and surface trains. It's not going to stop anytime soon.
There's already a foot of snow on the ground, and it's falling so thick that the path' [...]
by Andrew Zajac
President Obama linked his efforts to pass health care overhaul legislation to repeated failed bi-partisan attempts to secure a so-called patients bill of rights, which would keep insurance companies from dumping customers because of pre-existing conditions or illness.
Americans will be protected from such sudden losses of coverage [...]
by Mark Silva
The GTMO (as in Guantanamo Bay Naval Station) Latinos defeated the GTMO Assassins this year - and we're not talking about terrorism or detention here.
We're talking volleyball.
The latest news from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, courtesy of the appropriately named magazine of the Guantanamo Joint Task Force - "The" [...]
by Mark Silva
President Barack Obama, arriving in wintry Copenhagen today at the close of a two-week international conference on climate change, said the will of nations to confront the challenge of global warming "hangs in the balance.''
This is the president's second journey to Copenhagen.
The first ended in deep disappointment:" [...]
by Mark Silva
President Barack Obama, arriving in wintry Copenhagen today at the close of a two-week international conference on climate change, said the will of nations to confront the challenge of global warming "hangs in the balance.''
This is the president's second journey to Copenhagen.
The first ended in deep disappointment:" [...]
by Mark Silva
Joe Trippi, who served as campaign manager for Howard Dean's unique bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, has signed on for a new ride: FOX News contributor.
The Swamp has learned that the indefatigable Democrat will join the lineup of commentators on call for political analysis' [...]
by Mark Silva
With President Barack Obama's job approval rating at a term-low near the end of his first year, the Pew Research Center's Andrew Kohut suggests that "what's really exceptional at this stage of Obama's presidency is the extent to which the public has moved in a conservative direction" [...]
Kaya, our Brittany: priceless. Our love, too. Photo by Lisa Silva.
by Mark Silva
Man's best friend is worth more than an end table.
And it would seem to make sense that there is more pain and suffering worth compensation in the shooting of one's dog than say, the breaking of [...]
by Mark Silva
As America's best writer once said of premature reports of his own death, the White House suggests that writing off health-care reform now would be "a tragic outcome.''
"It would be a tragic, tragic outcome,'' David Axelrod, the president's senior political adviser, said in an appearance [...]
by Mark Silva
Who would have thought that President Barack Obama, who campaigned with pledges to bring American troops home from Iraq and offer health care to millions of more Americans, would face growing public support for his decision to deploy more forces in Afghanistan and dwindling support for [...]
by Mark Silva
There is such a thing as Northern exposure and Southern exposure, each casting different lights. And in politics, there is both good exposure and bad exposure, each shedding new light on the politicians.
Sarah Palin effectively limited her Northern exposure when she resigned as governor of Alaska, extricating [...]
by Mark Silva
There is such a thing as Northern exposure and Southern exposure, each casting different lights. And in politics, there is both good exposure and bad exposure, each shedding new light on the politicians.
Sarah Palin effectively limited her Northern exposure when she resigned as governor of Alaska, extricating [...]
by Mark Silva and updated with transcript
There is a ''disconnect'' between what the public wants out of health care reform -- lower costs -- and what President Barack Obama wants -- heatlh care coverage for the millions of uninsured -- according to that Battleground Poll today.
But [...]
by Mark Silva
While President Barack Obama's approval rating has slipped to 49 percent in another poll released today, most Americans surveyed still say that Obama has "a new approach'' to politics in Washington.
That's a slim majority, however, according to the results of a Pew Research Center poll: While 53" [...]
by Mark Silva
How about those New York City bankers who couldn't make it to the White House this week, the transportation secretary was asked. How was it that he managed to make it to New York for a TV show?
"Amtrak,'' he explained. "Amtrak runs in the fog.''
Ray LaHood,' [...]
by Mark Silva
Anger among independent voters about the economy and the direction the nation is taking offer Republicans a significant opportunity to reclaim power in the 2010 midterm congressional elections, according to the results of a bipartisan "Battleground Poll'' released today.
A lack of passion among President Barack Obama's core" [...]
by Mark Silva
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, a student of the Great Depression who has fought to avert another one, is Time magazine's "person of the year.''
It was Bernanke, and then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who were said to have sucked the oxygen from a roomful of'" [...]
by Mark Silva
President Barack Obama, who knows his way around the dictionary, certainly could not have been channeling former President George W. Bush today when he said:
"From the discussions we had, it's clear that we are on the precipice of an achievement that's eluded Congresses and presidents for" [...]
by Mark Silva
President Barack Obama, who knows his way around the dictionary, certainly could not have been channeling former President George W. Bush today when he said:
"From the discussions we had, it's clear that we are on the precipice of an achievement that's eluded Congresses and presidents for" [...]
by Noam N. Levey and Janet Hook
President Barack Obama, acknowledging that he will have to accept serious compromises in the passage of a health-care overhaul, insisted today that he will not let the public down on an issue that he has made the centerpiece of his first-year domestic [...]
by Noam N. Levey
The left may be livid at Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Senate Democratic leaders who caved to his demand to remove any public option from the healthcare bill that Democrats are pushing to pass next week.
But bowing to reality, Health Care for America Now, [...]
by Mark Silva
The jumpin' jazz band in the East Room of the White House last night was new: This isn't your father's Marine Band, which has been known to serenade guests crossing the Cross Hall with traditional tunes at the annual holiday reception for the press.
So was [...]
by Mark Silva
President Barack Obama went to Home Depot today.
"Seeing how Christmas is right around the corner, and we're at Home Depot, I figured I might knock out some of my shopping,'' the president said at the icon of the big-box stores in Northern Virginia.
"My press secretary wants something' [...]
by Michael Muskal
If Congress does not pass a bill soon, the fight for a healthcare overhaul could be pushed back for a generation, Vice President Joe Biden warned this morning.
With Democratic senators ready to meet with President Barack Obama this afternoon, Biden appeared this morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe.
by Mark Silva
George W. Bush wasn't an e-mailer.
But plenty of others in the Bush White House were.
Two nonprofit groups that have been at odds with the White House over access to emails say they have reached an agreement with the White House for the restoration of 22 million emails' [...]
by Mark Silva
After the Big Three automakers' executives caught flak for flying private jets to Washington for meetings with the overseers of the auto-industry bailout, the bailed out bankers weren't likely to be taking private jets to Monday's summit at the White House.
And, after [...]
by Mark Silva
Maybe now we know why President Barack Obama, leader of the free world, and Warren Buffett, "oracle of Omaha,'' get along so well.
They're related.
So says the research of Ancestry.com, the online genealogical enterprise that's gained a name for making long-lost connections.
Obama and Buffett apparentl are even'" [...]
by Jim Tankersley
COPENHAGEN - Something is melodramatic in Denmark.
For what felt like the umpteenth time since the international climate summit began here last week, a floor protest briefly shut down the negotiations today - at least in public.
This time, it was a group of African nations, led by [...]
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
by Mark Silva
During the tour of the White House at Christmas that Oprah Winfrey gave viewers last night, she also got the president of the United States to give himself a grade.
After [...]
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
by Mark Silva
Payback is bittersweet.
Actor William Shatner has done enough beat-poetry readings of Sarah Palin's summer farewell address from Anchorage and her newly published memoir that he might have expected the surprise guest' [...]
by David G. Savage
The Supreme Court said today it would rule for the first time on whether employees have a right to privacy when they send text messages on electronic devices supplied by their employers.
The justices agreed to hear an appeal from a police department in Ontario, Calif., [...]
by Mark Silva and updated with GOP response.
Slowing the growth of health-care costs - "bending the curve,'' as it's become known - is one of the goals that reformers have in mind.
The bills which Democratic leaders have pushed through the House and are pushing through the Senate do that,'" [...]
by Mark Silva
President Barack Obama says the nationally televised speech before an assembly of cadets at West Point where he announced his reasoning for the deployment of another 30,000 troops in Afghanistan was, for him, "the most emotional'' speech that he has delivered.
It "hit me in the gut,'' the [...]
by Mark Silva
Larry Summers, the president's chief economic adviser, says the shedding of jobs in an economy emerging from recession should end by Spring.
"It will take time,'' Summers said in an appearance on CNN's State of the Union with John King today. "A year ago, the question was [...]
by Jim Oliphant and Kim Geiger
Last week, Senate Democrats reached a tentative agreement on a proposal to help move the healthcare overhaul forward. The Congressional Budget Office is examining the proposal's cost. Meanwhile, here is a look at what is known so far.
Would this proposal replace the "public option"' [...]
by "Jack Bruce"
Where is Bill Murray when you need him?
People, it's been one of those weeks.
If it weren't for our faith in humanity, after the run of commentary here, we wouldn't have no faith at all. We've been down so long, it still looks like down. [...]
by Mark Silva
Both President Barack Obama and Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee are bound for Copenhagen next week, among the many U.S. representatives at an international conference that will conclude with an attempt at a framework for an agreement on controlling climate change.
"If President Obama has his" [...]
by Mark Silva
Republicans voted against the economic stimulus in the House. They voted against the health-care overhaul in the House. Most of them voted against the "cap and trade'' energy bill in the House, though the handful of Republicans who supported that bill helped pass it.
And, today, Republicans in" [...]
by Jim Tankersley
COPENHAGEN -- A flurry of draft proposals for new international climate agreements hit international negotiators today, bringing with them what many delegates and environmentalists called new momentum toward a climate deal.
Two drafts carry particular importance for the talks. One is a plan to extend the 1997 [...]
by Mark Silva
When Jill Biden wants to get the vice president's attention on an important political issue she tapes a message to the bathroom mirror at the Naval Observatory mansion.
" If I want him to get my position on something, I Scotch Tape it to" [...]
by Mark Silva
Bo has a stocking.
This is only part of what's to be revealed Sunday night on "Christmas at the White House: An Oprah Primetime Special.''
The first family and the first lady of daytime television sat in the Green Room of the White House, where" [...]
by Mark Silva,
with a noon posting moved up for the evening: We're hard-pressed for more pressing news heading into the first of the holiday weekends. Cheers.
Bo has a stocking.
This is only part of what's to be revealed Sunday night on "Christmas at the White" [...]
by Mark Silva and Michael Muskal
We recall today one of the stranger stories of the year, the day that South Carolina's governor went missing and his office said he had gone hiking on the Appalachian Trail.
Now Jenny Sanford, estranged wife of embattled Gov. Mark Sanford, has [...]
by Mark Silva
It's probably going to be impossible to forget listening to Vic Damone singing Sen. Orrin Hatch's Jesus' Love is Like a River in a nearly empty tent on a hot day at the Iowa GOP Straw Poll.
That's precisely what we were doing one day one [...]
by Mark Silva
America is in debt.
Congressional leaders have been reminded of that at every turn of the health-care debate, in the energy debate, the stimulus debate, the bailout debate and the unemployment debate. The accumulated national debt is $12 trillion and rising -- with Congress getting ready to lift [...]
by Mark Silva
There was no poll here.
Just a selective recall from random memories of a year run amok with certifiably dumb ideas, which leads to our offering this afternoon of the 10 dumbest lines of the year:
by Mark Silva
Behind every successful man (In Saudi Arabia and Japan, perhaps), there stands a successful woman.
But she stands in front of the man (from the United States, in this case) when there's lint on the lapel of a president in line to receive a Nobel Peace [...]
by Mark Silva
There was a time, early in this most eventful year soon coming to an end, when most people thought the country would be better off with Congress controlled by the Democrats, as it was then and is now.
That also was a time when the new president's' [...]
by Mark Silva and updated again at 3 pm EST
Today, on the day that President Barack Obama accepted a Nobel Peace Prize which even the recipient acknowledges has arrived early in his presidency, reviews of his Nobel Lecture are certain to arrive swiftly as well.
We'll collect some' [...]
Read a full text of the president's Nobel Lecture below the fold. See the president's speech here and read the full report from Oslo, updated at the conclusion at 8:20 am EST.
(Also see, below the fold, the toast that Obama gave at the Nobel Prize dinner.)
By Christi [...]
by Jim Tankersley
COPENHAGEN -- In public at least, the early days of the climate summit here have been dominated by developing nations' furor over a proposed "Copenhagen Agreement" that was leaked to environmentalists and reporters on Tuesday.
But many developing nations - including China and India -' [...]
by Jim Tankersley
COPENHAGEN -- In public at least, the early days of the climate summit here have been dominated by developing nations' furor over a proposed "Copenhagen Agreement" that was leaked to environmentalists and reporters on Tuesday.
But many developing nations - including China and India -' [...]
by Mark Silva
It's one thing, perhaps, to challenge the White House -- as FOX News Channel's Glenn Beck has been doing -- for inviting an "ex-con" to a State Dinner: Robert Creamer, the former Illinois Public Action Fund director who did some prison time for check kiting and tax [...]
by Mark Silva
It's one thing, perhaps, to challenge the White House -- as FOX News Channel's Glenn Beck has been doing -- for inviting an "ex-con" to a State Dinner: Robert Creamer, the former Illinois Public Action Fund director who did some prison time for check kiting and tax [...]
by Mark Silva
On his way to Oslo tonight to collect the Nobel Prize for Peace, President Barack Obama certainly has considered these words as he prepares to deliver his own:
"We must ever bear in mind that the great end in view is righteousness, justice as between man" [...]
by Michael Muskal
President Barack Obama today praised Senate efforts to find a compromise on the public-option portion of the healthcare overhaul, calling it a creative approach that he supported.
Obama announced more than $500 million in Recovery Act funds to go to 85 community health centers across the country. [...]
by Mark Silva
It's the holiday season at the White House, decked out for the winter holidays with an array of recycled ornaments from years past as a nod to the need for conservation.
But that doesn't mean that anyone at the punch bowl is holding back any punch' [...]
by Mark Silva
Al Gore, star of the Oscar Award-winning An Inconvenient Truth and Nobel Peace Prize-winner for his advocacy of averting climate change, says he cannot control the "noise machine'' of global-warming "deniers,'' but dismisses the emails that have cranked up the noise.
The former vice president discussed the controversy [...]
by Mark Silva
They've already had the lecture on "Telomeres and Telomerase: The Means to the End,'' by Elizabeth Blackburn, one of the Nobel Prize winners in medicine.
And they've already heard the lecture on "Decoding the Genetic Message,'' by Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, one of the prize winners in chemistry.
And the ones [...]
by Jim Tankersley
COPENHAGEN - The Obama administration launches a high-level charm offensive today here at the international climate treaty talks, as Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson kicks off a series of daily events by Cabinet secretaries in hopes of convincing world leaders that the United States is serious [...]
by Mark Silva and updated
In the practice of preaching to the choir, Sarah Palin appears to have all but patented the art of saying what a few want to hear -- and it's an all-new tune now.
Palin, who was the Republican Party's nominee for vice president, is suggesting that [...]
by Mark Silva
President Barack Obama's overall job-approval rating has registered somewhat higher than in other recent polls - 54 percent approval -- in a new Bloomberg News-sponsored poll released today.
The president receives particularly higher ratings for his handling of foreign policy in the poll - 59 percent approval.
And, [...]
by Mark Silva
President Barack Obama, bowing to other leaders of the world, fails to understand the concept of "American exceptionalism,'' former Vice President Dick Cheney contends.
"There's never been a nation like the United States of America in world history, and yet when you have a president who goes around [...]
by Mark Silva
Another national poll measuring a loss of majority support for the job that President Barack Obama is performing suggests that the president is "coming up short'' in his promise of unifying the nation.
The president's public job-approval stands at 46 percent in the Marist College Poll released" [...]
by Mark Silva
In Washington, President Barack Obama said today, critics are "waxing political'' about curtailing the federal deficit after a decade of compounding it.
"One of the central goals of this administration is restoring fiscal responsibility,'' the president in a speech detailing his ideas for redirecting some of [...]
by Jim Tankersley
COPENHAGEN - After an opening day of pomp and hope-sowing, the largely behind-the-scenes negotiations for a new global climate treaty have begun in earnest here in Danish capital.
That means it's time for the bargaining-table leaks to begin, as veterans of past climate summits will tell you.
by Mark Silva
It was inevitable.
Art immitates life.
Memorable memoirs are made of this.
The spoof of Sarah Palin's popular memoir, Going Rogue, is entitled Going Rouge.
But friends of Sarah may be seeing [...]
by Mark Silva
The biggest borrowing in the history of Chicago's Water Reclamation District was supposed to be "fair and reasonable.''
Yet it cost taxpayers $8 million in unnecessary interest and spawned a "bonanza'' for bankers and investors, Bloomberg News reports.
Michael Quint and John McCormick, weighing in with a look at [...]
by Mark Silva
Credit Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele for reading the White House schedule, the one that features President Barack Obama today proposing a new jobs-boosting program in the midst of pervasive high unemployment.
Obama, Steele says in a letter to the White House today, should be looking [...]
by Mark Silva
As President Barack Obama heads for Oslo this week to accept the Nobel Prize for Peace -- only the third sitting president to accept the award -- he is ramping up the U.S. military deployment in Afghanistan, an eight-year-old war, to nearly 100,000 troops.
The irony [...]
by Mark Silva
President Barack Obama's job approval in the Gallup Poll's daily tracking survey today -- 47 percent -- marks a new low for the president's job ratings.
Obama's approval has fallen below [...]
by Mark Silva
In the aftermath of the ACORN workers offering tax advice to self-appointed undercover video-cops posing as a prostitute and pimp, ACORN has investigated itself and found that its employees broke no laws.
That may come as little surprise to ACORN's critics.
The organization's director calls the results of [...]
by Mark Silva
Sarah Palin's Going Rogue national book-signing tour may be good for more than book sales:
Public opinion of the Republican former governor of Alaska has risen in recent months, according to the findings of a new [...]
by Mark Silva
In Washington, there are talking heads, and then there are Talking Heads. And sometimes, both of them are talking about transportation.
The Brookings Institution is playing host to several speakers this week, including a couple with something oddly in common:
David Byrne, [...]
by Jim Tankersley
COPENHAGEN -- With strident appeals for action and sharp rebukes of their critics, diplomats from around the world launched a two-week negotiating summit in the Danish capital today, in hopes of producing a new agreement to curb climate change.
"The time for formal statements is over," said [...]
by Mark Silva
This is "a date which will live in infamy,'' as President Franklin Roosevelt told the Congress the day after Japan unleashed a devastating surprise attack on American naval and air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941.
"The United States was at peace with that nation,'' [...]
by Mark Silva
The Obama administration is holding a workshop today on open goverment.
It's closed to the public and press.
The workshop is being held by the Justice Department's Office of Information Policy for the public liasons at federal agencies who field requests for records filed under the [...]
by Jim Tankersley
COPENHAGEN -- The Obama administration has finalized a declaration that greenhouse gases endanger public health, a senior administration official said today, opening the door to broad new regulations that could affect the largest segments of the American economy.
Under the so-called endangerment finding, the Environmental [...]
by Mark Silva
First Lady Michelle Obama sat next to "the Boss'' last night.
Seated on her other side at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington was the president of the United States, there to oversee the honors for singer Bruce Springsteen - a Rock and" [...]
by Mark Silva
Count Sen. Dick Durbin among those doubtful about the new deployment of troops in Afghanistan that President Barack Obama has ordered.
"I'm skeptical as to whether 30,000 more troops will make a difference,'' Durbin, the senior senator from Illinois, No. 2 Democratic leader in the Senate and mentor'" [...]
By Mark Silva
Count Sen. Dick Durbin among those doubtful about the new deployment of troops in Afghanistan that President Barack Obama has ordered.
"I'm skeptical as to whether 30,000 more troops will make a difference,'' Durbin, the senior senator from Illinois, No. 2 Democratic leader in the Senate and mentor'" [...]
by Mark Silva
It's a rite of passage for politicians in Washington:
Making fun of oneself.
And sometimes politicians do it on purpose - particularly when it's a matter of performing for the Gridiron Club.
That's what Sarah Palin, the Republican [...]
by Mark Silva
"Climategate,'' they call it.
What a joke.
As if the hacking of some email in England exposing some overzealous scientists with a political agenda undermines the world's collection of scientific data on climate change.
Suddenly, it's time for Al Gore to surrender his Nobel Prize.
"Poor [...]
by Mark Silva
On the heels of the best employment report of the year -- albeit one with continuing job losses -- President Barack Obama says additional steps will be needed to help a reviving economy produce more new jobs in the year ahead and insists that overhauling the [...]
by Mark Silva
Sarah Palin says she is no birther.
The author of Going Rogue insists that she has never suggested that President Barack Obama, a native of Hawaii, was not born in the United States.
Yet, in a radio interview this week, the Republican candidate for vice president [...]
by Mark Silva
Gov. Charlie Crist, the popular Florida governor running for Senate, got his numbers crossed, inadvertently directing parents to a sex phone line.
Callers to the governor's office heard an on-hold recording of Crist promoting the toll-free Florida KidCare line, a program of subsidized health care for [...]
by Mark Silva
President Barack Obama not long ago fielded a question from a high-schooler in Virginia about how one goes about getting the job that the president has.
"Let me give you some very practical tips,'' the president replied. "First of all, I want everybody here to be [...]
by Michael Muskal
Armed with some good economic news, President Barack Obama took his campaign for more jobs to Pennsylvania today, but ran into more than he bargained for in questions.
Speaking at Lehigh Carbon Community College in Schnecksville, Pa., Obama made the usual points: That his administration had worked hard [...]
by Mark Silva
Americans only narrowly support the "new way forward'' that President Barack Obama has announced for the U.S. military in Afghanistan - with 51 percent supporting the strategy unveiled this week at West Point.
And the public is divided in its confidence that the plan - adding" [...]
by Mark Silva and updated
Americans only narrowly support the "new way forward'' that President Barack Obama has announced for the U.S. military in Afghanistan - with 51 percent supporting the strategy unveiled this week at West Point.
And the public is divided in its confidence that the plan" [...]
by Don Lee
In a positive jobs report before the holidays, the nation's unemployment rate eased to 10 percent in November, from 10.2 percent in October, and the number of workers on payrolls was essentially unchanged last month, the Labor Department said today.
The report said employers shed a net 11,000 [...]
by Mark Silva
While President Obama seeks "a new era of engagement'' with the rest of the world, Americans are showing less interest in reaching outward than they have in a long time.
"For the first time in [...]
by Mark Silva
"We've seen significant turnaround in the economy,'' President Barack Obama said today. "Our economy was in a freefall.''
Yet, with unemployment running at over 10 percent, the White House opened a "jobs-summit'' today.
"Today, our economy is growing again for the first time in a year,'' the president said' [...]
by Mark Silva
Desiree Rogers came to Washington touting "the Obama brand.''
Now it's Rogers' brand of social management that some are questioning, with the White House Social Secretary at the center of congressional subpoena talk that in past times has been reserved for the likes of political architects" [...]
by Kathleen Hennessey and Mark Silva
With the House Homeland Security Committee holding a hearing today on the breach of White House security that enabled an uninvited Virginia couple access to a State Dinner, the ranking Republican is calling for subpoenas of both the couple and the White House social [...]
by Mark Silva
"We did not ask for this fight,'' President Barack Obama told the cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point this week in announcing an escalation -- and also the start of a troop drawdown -- of the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan.
"It's his [...]
by Mark Silva
Our friend and colleague Clarence Page notes that President Barack Obama has lost at least one old friend on one issue: Chicago's Bill Ayers, on the escalation of the war in Afghanistan.
Obama was criticized for "palin' around with terrorists'' during the presidential campaign by'" [...]
by Mark Silva
Sarah Palin was supposed to be drawing a pretty good crowd this evening on her Going Rogue tour at the College of the Ozarks.
But her appearance at the Mall of America is another story: Authorities there apologizing for suggesting that reporters covering the former Alaska governor's book-signing [...]
by Mark Silva
Who says FOX News doesn't like Barack Obama?
The first year of the Democratic president has been good for the nation's leading cable news channel - its viewership up 7 percent in prime-time hours so far in 2009, compared to the same time last year.
Make that 10 percent' [...]
[...]