Learning the hard way  —  Barack Obama may at last be getting a grip.  But he still needs to show more leadership, at home and abroad  —  HILLARY CLINTON'S most effective quip, in her long struggle with Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination last year, was that the Oval Office is no place for on-the-job training.

White House Debate Led to Plan to Widen Afghan Effort  —  WASHINGTON — President Obama's plan to widen United States involvement in Afghanistan came after an internal debate in which Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. warned against getting into a political and military quagmire …

Obama order worries free speech groups  —  Free speech advocates from across the political spectrum are accusing President BarackObama of impinging on First Amendment rights and are gearing up to take their case public.  —  At issue is an unprecedented directive that Obama …

Reid To Cave To Bayh On Cram-Down?  —  Earlier this month, the House of Representatives passed cram-down legislation designed to allow judges to write down the principal and interest on some mortgages to allow homeowners to stay in their homes, a goal that is a central pillar of President Obama's housing legislation.

ShamWow Guy In Slap, Chop Bust  —  TV pitchman battered hooker in South Beach hotel room brawl  —  Meet Vince Shlomi.  He's probably better known to you as the ShamWow Guy, the ubiquitous television pitchman who has been phenomenally successful peddling absorbent towels and food choppers.

The Return of Weakness  —  President Obama means well.  Iran doesn't.  —  In diplomacy and espionage, there is no worse mistake than “mirror-imaging,” that is, ascribing to foreigners your own actions and views.  For Westerners this is especially debilitating, given our modern proclivity …

Police identify 200 children as potential terrorists  —  Drastic new tactics to prevent school pupils as young as 13 falling into extremism  —  Two hundred schoolchildren in Britain, some as young as 13, have been identified as potential terrorists by a police scheme that aims to spot youngsters who are …

Obama's Man on the Budget: Just 40 and Going Like 60  —  WASHINGTON — At 6 in the morning, Peter R. Orszag is racing: across wet pavement for a 35-minute run, into a shower and a suit, and through a living room that looks rather like an office, the walls painted presidential gold and hung with pictures of federal monuments.

Weeks of Obama's budget sales pitch and support still slips  —  Now, we know why the White House laid on the immense trans-continental public relations offensive over its immense budget these past two-to-three weeks.  —  The Gallup Poll did another one this week on President Obama's $3,550,000,000,000 budget …

Building Good Roads  —  One problem in our transportation policy is that funding is unduly weighted to spending money on roads rather than spending money on mass transit.  Another problem in our transportation policy is that funding is unduly weighted to building new roads rather than to doing …

Edwin T. Snell launches recall of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger  —  Arnold Schwarzenegger, meet Edwin T. Snell.  —  His campaign skills may not be as slick or well-funded as the governor's.  But the San Bernardino County resident has garnered the 50 necessary signatures for a notice of intent …

Obama Pledges Attention to Flooding  —  WASHINGTON — President Obama, facing his first major natural disaster as president, used his weekly address on Saturday to urge those in flood-stricken areas in the Midwest to “remain vigilant” in monitoring the surging rivers there and to assure …