Byron York - Amid crises, Obama declares war -- on Arizona
The Obama administration has a lot of fights on its hands. Putting aside real wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, there's the battle against leaking oil in the Gulf, the struggle against 9.7 percent unemployment across the country, and clashes over the president's agenda on Capitol Hill. Despite all that, the White House has found time to issue a new declaration of war, this time against an unlikely enemy: the state of Arizona.
After nearly nine years in Afghanistan, U.S. and NATO leaders still do not adequately understand or communicate with the Afghan people, according to classified coalition assessments. That cultural disconnect, along with the West's continued support for a corrupt central government in Kabul, has made it easy for the Taliban to recruit insurgents and prevent NATO from making significant gains, according to classified coalition assessments.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., recently blamed Bush appointees who “burrowed in” at the Minerals Management Service for the regulatory failures that led to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. But as it turns out, not one of the officials responsible for overseeing the exploded rig was a Bush political appointee.
The Washington Examiner has obtained biographic information on the MMS officials responsible for overseeing BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig at the time it exploded, from the Gulf Region Director to the last inspector to set foot on the rig. Most of these federal employees started with the agency decades ago. Not one was a presidential appointment of George W. Bush
This morning, a White House spokesman told ABC News that Kyl is lying. “The President didn’t say that and Senator Kyl knows it,” communications director Dan Pfeiffer told ABC. “There are more resources dedicated toward border security today than ever before, but, as the President has made clear, truly securing the border will require a comprehensive solution to our broken immigration system.”
Now, in an interview with KVOI radio in Arizona, Kyl says his account of the Oval Office conversation is accurate. “What I said occurred did occur,” Kyl said.
With Democrats in charge of Congress, the various factions in the party have been unable to agree on what a long-term budget plan should look like. The fiscally conservative Democratic House Blue Dog Coalition wants to curb federal spending in order to reduce the nation's $1.3 trillion deficit. The 54-member group is calling for a 2 percent cut in spending in each of the next three years, a proposal that the even larger coalition of liberal Democrats will not support.
"It's an election year and the problem is, to keep the economic recovery going, you have to keep spending money," said another Democratic aide close to the budget process. "You can't really cut back and keep the economy going but when you do that, you keep running up the deficit and people don't like to vote for budgets with big deficits."
Lynn Mitchell - Does Gen. McChrystal have buyer's remorse?
It appears that Gen. Stanley McChrystal is returning to the U.S. to be reprimanded by President Barack Obama for making candid -- and critical -- remarks about the POTUS in Rolling Stone magazine.
With tempers high over the oil spill, discourse on global warming has become increasingly relevant as some are trying to use the spill as a justification for aggressive environmental legislation, including cap and trade policies. Brian Sussman, author of Climategate and former meteorologist, has the opposite point of view, describing the current situation as "the perfect crisis to really sock it the fossil fuel industry at large" for those determined to do so.
I had to laugh this week when my husband expressed his dismay at being completely confounded by my son’s first grade report card. As a teacher with a master’s degree, an education policy wonk, and daughter of a retired elementary school teacher, I found it to be equally mystifying.
Bruce McQuain - Why more regulation won’t solve our ‘regulatory problem’
E. D. Kain - J.D. Hayworth: Pork Barrel Pusher
Rob Bluey - GOP senators introduce bill to suspend Jones Act
E. D. Kain - The paranoid delusions of the expert class
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