Obama's Startling Second Inaugural  —  This was the most sustainedly “progressive” statement Barack Obama has made in his decade on the national stage.  —  I was expecting an anodyne tone-poem about healing national wounds, surmounting partisanship, and so on.

Obama Averages 49% Approval in First Term  —  Approval has been climbing in recent quarters  —  PRINCETON, NJ — President Barack Obama averaged 49.1% job approval during his first term in office, among the lowest for post-World War II presidents.  Only Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford had lower job approval averages.

Lupe Fiasco: Official Statement From StartUp Rock On Organizers  —  StartUp RockOn is all about startups helping startups.  At Sunday night's Inauguration Celebration at the Hamilton Live, organizers set out to honor innovative visionaries with grants, accolades and a party worthy of the success …

Obama Becomes A “Great” President  —  And Republicans start looking for ways to embrace him.  Liberals should be prepared to lose him.  —  Image by Pool / Reuters  —  This time about 12 years from now, President Tagg Romney will, with a mixture of exasperation and amusement …

Wanted: ‘Adventurous woman’ to give birth to Neanderthal man - Harvard professor seeks mother for cloned cave baby  — His ambitious plan requires a human volunteer willing to allow the DNA to be put into stem cells, then a human embryo  —  They're usually thought of as a brutish, primitive species.

Where's Mitt?  In warm, sunny California  —  It's chilly on the Capitol steps today, but that's no problem for Mitt Romney.  —  The former Republican presidential contender is spending Inauguration Day at his home in La Jolla, Calif., where it's sunny with a forecasted high of 73 degrees.

Obama Prepares To Govern From The Left  —  Gay rights, climate, and gun control!  “A much more muscular form of liberalism,” says Begala.  —  Image by Pool photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images/MCT  —  WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's determinedly progressive second inaugural speech …

Obama Takes One Last Look At Inauguration Crowd: 'I'll Never See This Again'  —  Departing the West Front of the U.S. Capitol after delivering his second inaugural address on Monday, President Obama wanted to take one last glance of the hundreds of thousands of Americans gathered to celebrate his second term.

The Big Deal  —  On the day President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, an exuberant Vice President Biden famously pronounced the reform a “big something deal” — except that he didn't use the word “something.”  And he was right.  —  In fact, I'd suggest using this phrase to describe the Obama administration as a whole.

Paul Ryan on the President's Swearing-In  —  I congratulate President Obama on his inauguration, and I join the country in celebrating this American tradition.  —  The president and I were political opponents.  We had strong disagreements over the direction of the country—as we still do now.

Republicans: Obama should have reached out more in address  —  Republicans lawmakers criticized President Obama's inaugural address Monday, saying he failed to reach out to their party.  —  “I would have liked to have seen some outreach,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who lost to Obama in the 2008 presidential race.

Joan Rivers: First lady's new 'do is a 'don't'  —  Hollywood fashion critic Joan Rivers does not approve of first lady Michelle Obama's newly cut bangs.  —  “Today starts President Obama's next four years in the White House,” Rivers tweeted Monday.  “Let's hope the same isn't true about the first lady's new hairdo.”

How M.I.T. Ensnared a Hacker, Bucking a Freewheeling Culture  —  In the early days of 2011, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology learned that it had an intruder.  Worse, it believed the intruder had been there before.  —  Months earlier, the mysterious visitor had used …