memeorandum: White House declines to rule out the minting of a ‘platinum coin’ (Justin Sink/The Hill)

11:30 PM ET, January 9, 2013

Top Items:

Biden: Obama Considering ‘Executive Orders’ to Deal With Guns — Vice President Joe Biden revealed that President Barack Obama might use an executive order to deal with guns. — “The president is going to act,” said Biden, giving some comments to the press before a meeting with victims of gun violence.

Discussion: FP Passport, Maggie's Notebook, National Review, CNN, The Gateway Pundit, Sense of Events, neo-neocon, protein wisdom, Connecting.the.Dots, Michelle Malkin, Washington Examiner and The Caucus

David Weigel / Slate:

What Crazy Fascist Executive Orders Might Obama Use to Take Away Your Freedoms? — The Drudge Report is America's leading source of hyperlinks to Alex Jones articles, so I'm not sure why this splash page so shocked Washington. (Apparently there are reporters who still use Drudge as a sort of homepage?

Discussion: Hot Air, Talking Points Memo and The Gateway Pundit

Amie Parnes / The Hill:

Biden: Obama prepared to take executive action on gun control — President Obama will likely take executive action in an effort to tamp down the recent rash of gun violence, Vice President Biden said Wednesday. — “The president is going go act,” said Biden, who is conducting meetings all week on the issue of gun control.

Discussion: ABCNEWS, The Hill, The Week, CNN, The Democratic Daily, Hot Air and Politico

Evan McMorris-Santoro / Talking Points Memo:

GOP Rep: An Executive Order On Guns Smacks Of ‘Dictatorship’ — The gloves are officially off in the gun control fight in Washington. After Vice President Biden reiterated the White House intention to use executive power to reduce gun violence following the Newtown shooting …

Discussion: Weasel Zippers and Truthdig

Evan McMorris-Santoro / Talking Points Memo:

California Town Hall Provides Glimpse At The Future Of The Gun Control Debate — Advocates on both sides of the gun control debate are prepared to make a lot of noise about the future of gun regulations in the wake of the Newtown, Conn. shooting. That's the message from the first of House …

Discussion: KGO-TV, The Plum Line and Washington Monthly

Reuters:
Biden says Obama could use executive orders to restrict guns

Discussion: TalkLeft

Washington Wire:
Wal-Mart Misses a Meeting With Biden on Gun Violence

Discussion: Shakesville, Twitchy, AMERICAblog, The Gateway Pundit, Business Insider, Forbes, The Raw Story, msnbc.com and Alan Colmes'Alan Colmes'

Josh Levs / CNN:
Biden: Obama ‘going to act’ on guns

Discussion: First Read, Piers Morgan, BuzzFeed, Mediaite, The Hinterland Gazette, The Moderate Voice, The Political Carnival, Twitchy, The Daily Caller and This Just In, more at Mediagazer »

Matthew Yglesias / Slate:

The Biggest Myth About The Platinum Coin Option — The biggest and weirdest myth out there about the $1 trillion platinum coin is the idea that it would require a large quantity of platinum to make one. The National Republican Campaign Committee, for example, is out there warning that …

Discussion: Mother Jones, Wonkblog and Eschaton

Justin Sink / The Hill:

White House declines to rule out the minting of a ‘platinum coin’ — The White House on Wednesday declined to rule out minting a “platinum coin” to avoid default if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling. — Press secretary Jay Carney on Wednesday said there is “no substitute” …

Discussion: The Reaction, The Verge, Booman Tribune and ABCNEWS

Tom Maguire / JustOneMinute:

He's Ready For The Clown Suit — [Kevin Drum suggests and I strongly concur that the language seemingly enabling the Trillion Dollar Coin does no such thing - briefly, “bullion coin” has a meaning upon which Congress relied in drafting the law. See “BEFORE THEY STRIKE THAT COIN THEY BETTER …

Discussion: Mashable! and Althouse

Ryan Cooper / Washington Monthly:
Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe on the Legality of #mintthecoin

Discussion: Business Insider, Daily Kos, New Economic Perspectives, p m carpenter's commentary, American Prospect, Paul Krugman and PostPartisan

Alicia M. Cohn / The Hill: White House won't deport Piers Morgan

Aaron Dykes / Infowars:
Piers Morgan and Guests Discuss Shooting Alex Jones

Discussion: LewRockwell.com Blog and Shot in the Dark

Megan McArdle / Asymmetrical Information:
Washington Goes Platinum

Discussion: Mother Jones, The Reality-Based Community, American Prospect and A plain blog about politics

Linda Greenhouse / Opinionator:

Robert Bork's Tragedy — Even before Robert Bork died last month, he had achieved something close to martyrdom. In the quarter-century since the Senate rejected his Supreme Court nomination, successive generations of conservative lawyers and activists have carried the torch …

Jess Bravin / Wall Street Journal:

Court Wary on Warrantless DUI Tests — WASHINGTON—Supreme Court justices showed unease Wednesday about letting police without a search warrant draw a blood sample from an unwilling drunken-driving suspect, but they also expressed sympathy for the urgency faced by officers in such traffic stops.

Lyle Denniston / SCOTUSblog:
Argument recap: Compromise on DUI blood tests?

Discussion: ABCNEWS, U.S. News and The Volokh Conspiracy

Josh Israel / ThinkProgress:

Inaugural Benediction To Be Delivered By Pastor Who Gave Vehemently Anti-Gay Sermon — The Presidential Inauguration Committee announced Tuesday that the President Obama has selected Pastor Louie Giglio of the Georgia-based Passion City Church to deliver the benediction for his second inauguration.

Discussion: BuzzFeed, Firedoglake, Good As You, The Caucus, Politico, Towleroad News #gay, AMERICAblog, Advocate, Religion Dispatches and Pharyngula

Katie Glueck / Politico:
President Obama poet Richard Blanco's ‘queer shame’ pain

Discussion: Althouse and CNN

Jennifer Epstein / Politico:

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis resigns — Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said Wednesday she is resigning from the administration, a decision that comes as President Barack Obama is filling out his second-term Cabinet. — Solis was the first Hispanic woman to lead a major federal agency …

Discussion: Power Line

Suzanne Goldenberg / Guardian:
Barack Obama ‘seriously considering’ hosting climate summit

Discussion: Daily Kos, Truthdig and Blue Mass Group

CNN:
Labor secretary resigns ‘to begin a new future’

Discussion: This Just In

McKay Coppins / BuzzFeed: Labor Secretary Will Resign

Dylan Stableford / Yahoo! News:

Yahoo News exclusive: Trump releases birth certificate to Bill Maher, demands $5M — Donald Trump has placed himself in the middle of another controversy involving a birth certificate—this time his own. — In a letter obtained by Yahoo News, the real estate mogul and de facto leader of last year's …

Discussion: Reuters, The Political Carnival and Mediaite

Kevin Roose / Bloomberg:

Jack Lew's Terrible Signature May Grace Dollar Bills Now — Obama's America. — Jack Lew, President Obama's reported pick to replace outgoing Treasury secretary Tim Geithner, is known as a no-nonsense backroom negotiator with wonkish tendencies, who is admired on the left and grumbled about on the right.

Discussion: New York Times, Gawker, msnbc.com, The Fix, ABCNEWS, The New Republic, Post Politics, Mother Jones, Wonkblog, The Atlantic Online and Mediaite

Hans Nichols / Bloomberg:
Obama Said to Name Jack Lew to Replace Geithner at Treasury

Andy Kroll / Mother Jones:

Revealed: The Massive New Liberal Plan to Remake American Politics — A month after President Obama won reelection, America's most powerful liberal groups met to plan their next moves. Here's what they talked about. — It was the kind of meeting that conspiratorial conservative bloggers dream about.

Discussion: Maggie's Notebook, Washington Monthly and The Agonist

Eric Owens / The Daily Caller:

South Carolina teacher on leave for stomping on American flag in front of class — A high school teacher in South Carolina is under investigation and has been placed on long-term administrative leave after he allegedly threw an American flag on the floor and stomped on it in front of his students.

Discussion: Joanne Jacobs

Jennifer Emert / WIS-TV:
Midlands teacher accused of stomping on American flag in class

Discussion: Weasel Zippers

Rush Limbaugh:

There Goes My New Year's Resolution — RUSH: Okay. So I had this unstated New Year's resolution. I didn't tell anybody about it. I didn't even tell Kathryn about it. Just very private, unstated New Year's resolution, and it very simply was to become more low profile, to not get noticed.

Discussion: Towleroad News #gay, Politico and Mediaite

Jonathan Chait / New York Magazine:

Why Republicans Won't Bargain With Obama Again — James Capretta, writing at National Review, lays out what looks like the emerging Republican strategy on the debt ceiling. Rather than take up President Obama's offer to cut Social Security and Medicare in return for higher revenue through tax reform …

Discussion: Washington Monthly, The New Republic, Prairie Weather and p m carpenter's commentary

Michael Hastings / BuzzFeed:

How Obama Won The Internet — Would you rather fight one hundred duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck? In the second exclusive excerpt from Panic 2012: The Sublime and Terrifying Inside Story of Obama's Final Campaign , a behind-the-scenes look at the president's historic Reddit IAmA.

Michael Catalini / NationalJournal.com:

Are Republicans Scared of Al Franken? — SNL star-turned-senator isn't drawing much early GOP opposition. — After winning election by the narrowest of margins in 2008, Sen. Al Franken looked like one of the GOP's most inviting Senate targets in 2014. But instead, the party is facing …

Discussion: The Fix