A screen shot of former President Bill Clinton's interview on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.Credit
Interviewers of all kinds have been prodding the Clintons with questions from every angle in hopes of gathering a clue about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential intentions.
One read “My grandma is running for president in 2016,” and the other “My grandma’s a stay-at-home nanny.”
Well practiced at evading tricky questions, Mr. Clinton said that if he chose the 2016 onesie, “Hillary would be taking me up to strangers saying, ‘Have you met my first husband?’ Because
it’s not for me to decide.”
If she chooses to stay at home, Mr. Clinton said they’d both be happy.
Giving it one last try, Ms. Degeneres said that if Mr. Clinton took the 2016 onesie, he would be the “first husband” in either case.
Hoping to ward off regulations that would prevent companies like Comcast and Verizon from giving priority to some Internet traffic over others, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said that such a move would slow innovation
and job creation, and that it was “strongly opposed.”
“As an independent agency, the F.C.C. answers to Congress — not the administration,” R. Bruce Josten, the chamber’s executive vice president for government affairs, said on Tuesday.
New rules would unwind 20 years of bipartisan support for a lightly regulated Internet, the group argued.
The chamber is battling vocal activist groups like Popular Resistance, whose members camped outside the house of Tom Wheeler, the F.C.C. chairman, on Monday, chanting, “Don’t let the Internet die;
time to reclassify.”
In a video distributed by the group, one protester told Mr. Wheeler that he was tired of the Internet’s oligarchy.
Mr. Wheeler acknowledged the importance of the issue but then said that his rights were being violated because he was being prevented from backing his Mini Cooper out of his driveway to leave.
Wilma Burris visited the grave of her husband, David Graham Burris, at Arlington National Cemetery on Tuesday, which was Veterans Day. Mr. Burris served in the Army in the Persian Gulf and died on Aug. 3, 2010.Credit Jabin Botsford/The New York Times
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.Credit Kris Connor/Getty Images
The Supreme Court is famously secretive, and its justices do not always make it easy for the press to cover their public appearances. Still, reporters were surprised on Tuesday morning when the Federalist Society,
a conservative legal group, announced that the news media would be barred from an appearance by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. at its annual gala black-tie dinner.
“I’m sorry to inform you that yesterday afternoon Justice Alito and his staff decided to make his address Thursday evening closed to the press,” said an email from a spokeswoman for the
group. It landed at 10:18 a.m., and Twitter erupted.
Less than an hour later, a “clarification” arrived. “Due to a small mix-up, I emailed you earlier saying the keynote address from Justice Alito at the Federalist Society’s National
Lawyer’s Convention Thursday night was closed to the press,” the spokeswoman said. “It is actually open for pen and paper ONLY; no recordings or cameras.”
Kathleen Arberg, a Supreme Court spokeswoman, said the Federalist Society was to blame for the confusion. “They have it wrong,” she said of the initial announcement in an email. “Open to
pencil and pad, still camera coverage.”
The Federalist Society, in a tweet, said, “Press is welcome at Justice Alito’s talk, but no audio or video recording.”
Justice Alito has spoken to the group before under similar
ground rules. In 2009, Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke to more than 1,000 people at Yale Law School in an off-the-record session that was closed to the press. But when Justices Alito and Sotomayor appeared
at the law school last month, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, seats were set aside for the press, and a video was promptly posted.
Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida.Credit Win McNamee/Getty Images
Senator Marco Rubio says he is not sure whether he will run for president, but he is planning a national book tour that just happens to coincide with the start of the presidential election cycle.
Indeed, the book will come out in January,
right around the time that potential contenders for the White House are expected to begin announcing
their intentions to run.
The book’s title, “American Dreams: Restoring Economic Opportunity for Everyone,” has the ring of a pre-campaign treatise. The Tampa Bay Times reported that it will be more policy-oriented than Mr. Rubio’s previous book, which was biographical.
Mr. Rubio, in announcing the book’s release date on Tuesday, signaled its grand aspirations. “Of course, no book or politician can single-handedly restore the American Dream,” he said in
a written statement. “But a movement, working to promote the values and can-do spirit that made our country exceptional, can turn everything around.”
If Mr. Rubio does run for president, it would mean that pre-campaign literature is coming out increasingly early. Mitt Romney’s book, “No Apology,” was
released in February 2010.
Thousands of people will flock to the National Mall today to commemorate Veterans Day with live music from the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Eminem.
But amid that jubilation, it’s worth remembering that this holiday began as Armistice Day, marking this day in 1918, when the armistice ending World War I hostilities was signed on the 11th hour of the
11th day of that November.
The New York Times reported that day that the State Department released a simple announcement: “The armistice has been
signed.”
President Obama and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia discussed Iran, Syria and Ukraine during three brief conversations at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting.Credit Alexey Druzhinin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Tom Wheeler, the Federal Communications Commission chairman.Credit Mark Holm for
The New York Times
Good Tuesday morning from Washington, where 800,000 people are expected for Veterans Day festivities. President Obama has left town for China, where he seemed to relax after the Democrats’ shellacking last week. But first up, a look at the partisan fight that the president has set off over Internet regulations.
A year ago, Mr. Obama and congressional Republicans were locked in an intense battle over a health care website. Now they’re clashing over the web itself.
Mr. Obama announced on Monday that he wants the Federal Communications Commission to regulate the Internet
much as it does telephone companies, using government rules to guarantee “net neutrality” and prevent sweetheart deals between cable companies and content providers like Netflix.
The Republicans exploded in outrage, accusing the president of trying to impose 1930s-style, big-government regulations on 21st-century technology. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said the president
was trying to create “Obamacare for the Internet.”
Mr. Obama clearly believes the public will back his position: More than 3.7 million people urged the agency to adopt such a policy. The response broke the record of 1.4 million F.C.C. comments after Janet Jackson’s
“wardrobe malfunction” during the halftime show at the 2004 Super Bowl.
Still, Republicans have some of the nation’s biggest telecommunications companies on their side, and they are betting that many Americans won’t like the federal government interfering with the
Internet.
Either way, there might not be enough bandwidth for compromise on this issue.
President Obama is hardly buddies with the world leaders he is meeting in Beijing at an economic summit meeting this week.
But he seemed more at ease with President Xi Jinping of China and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia than he did last week at his postelection lunch with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio at the White House.
For years, it has been a tradition at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum for the assembled leaders to pose for a group photo in clothes native to the
host country. That has meant batik shirts in Indonesia, barongs in the Philippines and raincoats in Canada.
This week, Mr. Obama and the other leaders were outfitted in purple silk Chinese-style shirts with Mandarin collars — a choice that baffled some fashionistas, drawing comparisons to the uniform that Capt.
Jean-Luc Picard wears in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
Mr. Obama appeared delighted: He turned up for the opening ceremony in his shirt, smiling broadly. Some leaders wore them only for the photo.
Turns out that Mr. Obama tried to end the “silly shirt” tradition when APEC was held in Hawaii. He gave the leaders colorful aloha shirts but told them they did not have to wear them.
Geography might not quite be destiny, but Republicans ran up the score this year with their eye on the Senate map in 2016.
The midterm elections were fought on Republican turf, with Democrats defending Senate seats in seven states that voted for Mitt Romney in 2012. The races in two of them — Alaska and Louisiana
— haven’t been settled. (Votes are still being counted in Alaska, and Louisiana has a December runoff.)
The script will be flipped in 2016: Freshman Republicans elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010 will be defending six seats in states won by President Obama in 2012: Florida, Illinois, New Hampshire,
Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
There are other uncertainties. Will Senator Charles E. Grassley run for re-election at age 83 in Iowa, a two-time Obama state? Or how about Senator John McCain at 80 in Arizona,
where demographics are trending the Democrats’ way?
The 2016 map might even help Democrats win concessions from blue-state Republicans. One of them, Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, has implored Democrats to strike an accord on a broad
overhaul of the tax code — or, really, on anything.
“Any significant accomplishment that we can get done is something voters in Pennsylvania will be pleased with,” he said.
The concert today by Bruce Springsteen, Eminem, Rihanna and Metallica will attract throngs to the National Mall, shutting down some roads,
clogging others and rerouting the Metro.
Oh, and it’s Veterans Day, too.
Mr. Springsteen and crew are in town for the Concert of Valor, a free show that is expected to draw 800,000 people in honor of America’s troops. The festivities begin at 7 p.m.
Hosts will include Tom Hanks, Will Smith, Jack Black, Jamie Foxx and Oprah Winfrey.
President Obama is having a bilateral meeting and a private dinner with President XiJinping of China in Beijing.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will honor veterans at a breakfast at the White House and then head to Arlington National Cemetary for a wreath-laying ceremony.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel will speak by satellite at the General Assembly conference of the Jewish Federations of North America at the National Harbor in Maryland.
Former President George W. Bush‘s biography of his
father will be released.
Politics is a fickle business. And if your business actually is politics, the two-year election cycle can whip you from boom to bust and back again quickly.
Few people today know this better than the advisers who worked on the Mitt Romney campaign in 2012.
“In the first six months after the election, I’d talk to clients and they’d say, ‘I’m not so sure we want folks associated with Romney,’ ” said Russ Schriefer,
one of Mr. Romney’s senior political advisers responsible for much of the campaign’s advertising.
The jarring reversal-of-fortune nature of his work came sharply into focus on Memorial Day weekend last year. He was having coffee at a restaurant on the Jersey Shore with Gov. Chris Christie,
a client of his firm, Strategic Partners & Media. One of the servers walked over and started telling Mr. Christie how much he loved the governor’s ads.
Mr. Christie laughed and gestured to his ad man, saying he deserved all the credit. “You know,” the server said, “Mitt Romney could have used a guy like you.”
This year, Strategic Partners & Media prevailed in Maine, where Gov. Paul R. LePage won re-election; in Mississippi, where Senator Thad Cochran beat back a Tea Party insurgent
in a runoff; and in Maryland, where Larry Hogan pulled off one of the biggest upsets of Election Day and is now governor-elect.
The Wall Street Journal rounds up the biggest races nationwide that are still too close to call.
Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas (his twin brother, Julián, is President Obama’s housing secretary) and Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III (grandson of Bobby) are under consideration to lead the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for 2016, Politico reports.
James Poniewozik in Time asks if Republicans’ victories last week can “save” MSNBC by giving the network
an opponent to target. (Much as Fox News, he says, benefited from President Obama’s election.)
