One of the speeches addresses a complete overturn of the law, while another is crafted as if the court strikes down the law’s individual mandate but upholds other provisions. The third speech, for if the court upholds the entire law, is more celebratory, according to [a person familiar with them].Obama has three health care speeches ready, depending on how the court decides in the next half hour.
Very happy to announce that as of this morning, Heather and I are legally married (at least in DC). 20 years to the day after our first date.Dick Cheney’s daughter, Mary • Revealing that she got married to her longtime partner, Heather Poe, on Friday. The couple, which has two children, lives in Northern Virginia, but got married in Washington DC, one of the areas where gay marriage is legal. Congrats guys!
Bryson, 68, who has been in office since October, was found unconscious in his Lexus June 9, after the second of two collisions, police said. He had a seizure, according to his office. He took medical leave June 11.
In a letter to the agency today, he said he was resigning to prevent his situation from becoming a distraction to the agency.
Bryson’s crashes put him in danger of felony charges, though word about having a seizure behind the wheel only came out after the story about the initial crash did.
In what may be the most amusing story to come out of the campaign in a while, Obama’s pre-debate surrogate for Mitt Romney will be the guy who Romney is often compared to. Both are political figures from Massachusetts. Both are rich. Both have fielded complaints of being fake. And both are generally solid, if unexciting in debates. “There is no one that has more experience or understanding of the presidential debate process than John Kerry … He’s the obvious choice,” says top Obama adviser David Axelrod. No doubt. Let’s just look past the fact that Kerry has been downgraded from future president to presidential candidate stand-in. (photo by Dina Rudick/Boston Globe)
Conservatives would have you believe that our disappointing economic performance has somehow been caused by excessive government spending, which crowds out private job creation. But the reality is that private-sector job growth has more or less matched the recoveries from the last two recessions; the big difference this time is an unprecedented fall in public employment, which is now about 1.4 million jobs less than it would be if it had grown as fast as it did under President George W. Bush. And, if we had those extra jobs, the unemployment rate would be much lower than it is — something like 7.3 percent instead of 8.2 percent. It sure looks as if cutting government when the economy is deeply depressed hurts rather than helps the American people.Paul Krugman (via azspot)
What about American workers who are unemployed by immigrant farmers?The Daily Caller reporter Neil Munro • Interrupting President Obama while the president was making a speech about his new immigration policy, which allows for work visas for undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. at a young age. Because clearly this was a Q&A, not a speech. In related news, The Daily Caller won an Edward R. Murrow award for writing earlier this week, according to Munro’s most recent tweet.
![reuterspolitics:
President Obama meets Betty White in the White House Oval Office. [Pete Souza/White House]
What’s she saying to the president?](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5id31SsYO1rtzzbqo1_500.jpg)
President Obama meets Betty White in the White House Oval Office. [Pete Souza/White House]
What’s she saying to the president?
There’s a full-fledged Obama for America takeover going on at Talking Points Memo right now.
Oh, don’t you mean Baracking Points Memo? That said, it’s not like Obama’s never done this before.
Five minutes. Two separate crashes. John Bryson, who was appointed as Obama’s Commerce Secretary last year, could have a rough go of it after California police cited him in two separate hit-and-run accidents on Saturday. Bryson, who was found unconscious after the accidents, was treated at a local hospital for injuries, but was already released. He was in town to speak at a college commencement. No word if a medical condition, or drug or alcohol usage, might’ve contributed to the crashes. (EDIT: Bryson had a seizure, the Commerce Department said.) Either way, police are considering charges against him. The White House has yet to comment on the case, but Obama’s top adviser briefly discussed it: “Obviously it’s concerning,” said to David Axelrod to CBS This Morning, but he offered no further comment on the matter. (official photo via United States Department of Commerce) source
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Tumblr this morning. [h/t anne]
#@#$%!.tumblr.com
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» Was Obama’s point valid? It sounded like a pretty good gaffe to some, but Slate’s Dave Weigel thinks that the nuances of the point might’ve been lost on folks looking for a soundbite. As Weigel notes, the public sector at the state level has lost 600,000 jobs under Obama — which, by the way, the GOP is OK with, because they want to see the government shrink anyway. And as public sector and private sector unemployment are counted in the unemployment rate, it’s ultimately part of the reason the unemployment rate has stayed high. “It’s easier to pretend that the president doesn’t care about the private sector, and unemployment,” Weigel notes, “and hope that the media runs with the zinger instead of explaining some pretty rudimentary macroeconomics.”
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Now THIS is a man of God: “Have you ever read the Gospel and heard Jesus say anything about homosexuality? … Black folk can’t even deal with homosexuality because we got issues with sexuality. And because we got issues with sexuality we can’t have a healthy discussion about homosexuality. Why, why do you get so upset?” Find out much more about this here.
Hey, while you’re here, give our HV Tumblr a follow. We cool.
This is a very bold stance. Good for him.
The brother of al Qaeda’s second-in-command, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike, said Washington’s use of the remote-controlled weapons is inhumane and makes a nonsense of its claims to champion human rights.
U.S. officials said on Tuesday that Libyan-born al Qaeda operative Abu Yahya al-Libi was killed by a drone strike in Pakistan, in what was described as a major blow to the militant group.
The attack is likely to fuel an increasingly fierce debate about the legality and morality of the drones, which have become one of the chief U.S. weapons against al Qaeda but which opponents say stretch the definition of the legitimate use of lethal force.
READ MORE: Drones ‘inhumane,’ dead al Qaeda man’s family says
Yes, this is very much definitely fodder in a long-standing debate.
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