Washington, D.C., with its throngs wielding mobile phones along the avenues and subway platforms, is the USA’s Most Socially Networked City, according to a survey that ranks the 100 best and worst “Twitter Towns.” The survey will appear Tuesday in the April issue of Men’s Health magazine, published by Rodale, Inc. (more)
The inadvertent byproduct of a government shutdown is that it lets Americans in on a secret — they can do without many federal employees, at least for a short period of time. (more)
To those who still haven’t recovered from the 2007 cancellation of “The O.C.,” worry not, because a new geographic-based drama is coming to ABC, reports Politico. (more)
1.) FCIC dissenters defend bailing out Wall Street — Two reports will come out of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission today. The one written by the panel’s liberal majority will blame lax regulation and the banking industry for the collapse of the housing industry. The other, written by commissioners Bill Thomas, a former Republican congressman from California, Keith Hennessey, former chairman of the White House National Economic Council under President George W. Bush, and Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, spreads the blame more broadly among “investors, creditors, regulators, homebuyers, and politicians,” all of whom must take “personal responsibility.” The dissenters also defended bailing out Wall Street: “For a policymaker, the calculus is simple: if you bail out AIG and you’re wrong, you will have wasted taxpayer money and provoked public outrage,” the paper reads. “If you don’t bail out AIG and you’re wrong, the global financial system collapses. It should be easy to see why policymakers favored action–there was a chance of being wrong either way, and the costs of being wrong without action were far greater than the costs of being wrong with action.” Thank goodness we didn’t destabilize the global financial system, which might have led to really scary stuff, like high unemployment. (more)
Teenage deaths caused by drug and alcohol abuse are bound to be covered by local papers, and usually ignored by the national media, unless that notoriously fruity beverage Four Loko is somehow involved. (more)
The mayor of a small town in the Washington, D.C. suburbs is settling a lawsuit he filed against a Maryland county after his dogs were shot to death during a SWAT team raid at his house. (more)
More than one-fifth of House freshman have taken the “bring your work home with you” concept to another level by opting to sleep in their D.C. offices. (more)
Say what you will about his politics, but comedian Jon Stewart has mastered the art of turning the other cheek: In response to a jab from Glen Beck, Stewart invited the Fox News host to appear on “The Daily Show.” (more)
1.) White House reporters ask first truly tough questions in two years — Pres. Obama was inaugurated two years ago today, which means it only took the White House Press Corp members one year, 11 months, and 29 days to find their spines. “Could you explain to the American people how the United States could be so allied with a country that is known for treating its people so poorly, using censorship and force to oppress its people?” asked AP reporter Ben Feller. He then turned to China’s Hu Jintao and asked, “How do you justify China’s record and do you think that’s any of the business of the American people?” When a mixup with the translator prevented Hu from hearing Feller’s question, Bloomberg’s Hans Nichols used his turn to ask Feller’s question again. But no amount of tough questioning could force either Obama or Hu to answer honestly. And in front of God and everyone, the 2009 Nobel Prize winner claimed that the country which is keeping the 2010 Nobel Prize winner under house arrest has made “enormous progress” on human rights which has been “widely recognized in the world.” The ensuing cognitive dissonance threw the Washington Post for a spin. Both headlines appeared in this morning’s paper: “President Obama makes Hu Jintao look good on rights”; “Obama presses Chinese leader on rights.” (more)
Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher on Wednesday compared China to a Nazi regime in the midst of Chinese President Hu Jintao’s state visit to the U.S. (more)
Washington, DC – Vice President Joe Biden announced today that Bruce Reed will succeed Ron Klain in the role of Chief of Staff for the Office of the Vice President. Mr. Reed has most recently worked for the Administration as Executive Director of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, also known as the Bowles-Simpson Commission. In addition, the Vice President announced that one of his closest advisors, Michael C. Donilon, will be returning to his previous position as Counselor to the Vice President. (more)
1.) Catty Hill Dems can’t resist spinning a tragedy — Here are two good ways to win votes and influence people: Hours after a national tragedy, phone a reporter and spin the event this way: The Obama White House “need[s] to deftly pin this on the tea partiers….Just like the Clinton White House deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the militia and anti-government people.” When Pres. Obama instead says before a crowd in Tucson, “What we can’t do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another….Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations,” the next best thing Democrats can do, apparently, is personally attack Rep. John Boehner for not flying to Tucson to hear Obama discourage personal attacks. Different aide, different day, same moral depravity: “Don’t you think they could have worked with the White House on timing to make sure he got on AF1?,” a senior congressional aide told The Daily Caller’s Jon Ward on Thursday. “Hell, as speaker, he could have taken a delegation to Arizona on military air.” When it was pointed out that Boehner was already attending a memorial, in Washington, the aide argued that the speaker was skipping Tucson for an RNC event. “Tell these guys to give me a break. Bottom line: he’s not there and he’s Speaker of the House. He’s not there and is at an RNC event tonight. Period.” The aforementioned statements have nothing to do with why House Democrats are in the minority, but are two good reasons why they should stay there. (more)
UPDATE (5:30pm): The Center for Public Integrity responds to inquires made by TheDC. (more)
1.) Remember: The five worst reactions to the Loughner shooting — Washington never fails to disappoint. While normal people cry in response to tragedy, the buttinskys on Capitol Hill are attempting to legislate away the pain. The Daily Caller’s Chris Moody rounds up the dumbest of the dumb, from a plan to “encase the entire House and Senate floor with Plexiglass so the tourists can’t throw things at members of Congress,” to a Republican-proposed law that would make it illegal to carry a firearm within 1/5 of a mile “of any ‘high-profile’ public official.” In a lapse of judgment that will go unpublished by his base, Democratic Rep. James Clyburn argued that the FCC–on which his daughter is a commissioner–should bring back the Fairness Doctrine. “You cannot yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater and call it free speech and some of what I hear, and is being called free speech, is worse than that.” And people say Congress doesn’t listen… (more)
1.) Remember: You’re a liar and/or an idiot if you call it ‘a government takeover of health care’ — Tomorrow, a group of bureaucrats will meet to determine which treatments private insurance companies will be mandated to cover, and for how long. “The Obama administration faces a tough balancing act,” writes Kaiser Health News. “The benefits package must be broad enough to be comprehensive but not too broad as to be unaffordable. Patient advocates and industry lobbyists already are drawing up wish lists for items they want covered – including autism therapy, obesity treatments, infertility treatments and unlimited chemotherapy visits.” AEI’s Joe Antos told KHN, “This is an invitation for all kinds of lobbying from every conceivable disease group and provider group in the country.” For instance: Joe Nadglowski, CEO of the Obesity Action Coalition, thinks insurers should be required to cover bariatric surgery. “Adding a wider range of treatments would raise premium costs, Nadglowski acknowledges, but could save money over time if people sought both prevention and treatment for obesity.” That’s a lot of ifs. (more)
Multiple federal agencies are now doing a joint assessment to see if accused Arizona killer Jared Lee Loughner has any possible link to the several fiery packages that were sent to the head of the Homeland Security Department and Maryland state officials last week, The Post has learned. (more)
1.) Has the Great Walking Back of Promises (TM) begun? — House Speaker John Boehner has been in possession of Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s bejeweled gavel for less than 24 hours and already his party is modifying its promise to cut $100 billion in spending before the fiscal year is over. “A few House Republican aides admitted to TheDC that the party had slipped up in failing to correct the $100 billion figure – first thrown out in the ‘Pledge to America’ document released in late September – before this week,” writes Jon Ward. The more important goal, say Republicans like Rep. Paul Ryan, is to reduce spending to a level last seen in 2008, an apparent golden age of fiscal restraint. Also, says Ryan, the fiscal year began three months ago, which means “[w]e are halfway through the fiscal year right now,” and cutting $100 billion from the budget would be almost as difficult as figuring out how many months are in a year. Why did Republicans not walk back this promise on, say, September 23, 2010, the day after the Pledge was announced? Because Congress critters are terrified that the Tea Partiers will drizzle their coagulated blood on the Tree of Liberty. And metaphorically speaking, you know they will do it, too. (more)
Rep.-elect Joe Walsh, a Republican from Illinois, will make good on a campaign promise and forgo government provided health care for himself and his wife in protest of the Obama’s health care plan — in spite of his wife’s a preexisting condition. (more)
1.) Washington’s Funniest Celebrity tries new routine on ‘This Week’ — White House economic advisor and stand-up comic Austan Goolsbee told some really bad jokes yesterday on “This Week,” alleges David Frum. “I don’t see why anybody’s talking about playing chicken with the…with the debt ceiling.” Goolsbee said yesterday. Also: “If we hit the debt ceiling, that’s…essentially defaulting on our obligations, which is totally unprecedented in American history” and that it would “be the first default in history caused purely by insanity.” While the aforementioned superlative is debatable, the rest of Goolsbee’s claim is not. As David Frum points out, Goolsbee is jousting with windmills: Two weeks after the election, Rep. John Boehner said, “Whether we like it or not, the federal government has obligations and we have obligations on our part.” More likely, writes Frum, is that Obama is playing chicken not with debt, but with Americans’ confidence. That’s not funny at all. (more)
CBS anchor Katie Couric believes a “Muslim version of ‘The Cosby Show’” could open the eyes of Americans and perhaps put an end to all the ”seething hatred many people feel towards all Muslims.” (more)
