ObamaCare website contractors blame Obama administration  —  Principal contractors hired to build the ObamaCare website HealthCare.gov are hitting back at the Obama administration for the site's overwhelming technical problems.  —  The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) …

Harry Reid Told Caucus That Pete Sessions Was Behind Obama Insult, Senators Say  —  WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told his Democratic caucus last week in a private meeting that a top House Republican said to President Barack Obama, “I cannot even stand to look at you …

Obama wants Marines to wear ‘girly’ hats  —  A change to the Marine Corps' uniform hats could take the hard-nosed Leathernecks from the Halls of Montezuma to the shops of Christopher Street.  —  Thanks to a plan by President Obama to create a “unisex” look for the Corps …

George Soros joins Ready for Hillary national finance council  —  George Soros, the billionaire investor, philanthropist and backer of liberal causes, has signed on to be a co-chair of the national finance council for Ready for Hillary, the super PAC mobilizing support for a possible White House bid by Hillary Rodham Clinton.

A Wife Committed to Cruz's Ideals, but a Study in Contrasts to Him  —  WASHINGTON — At first glance, Senator Ted Cruz's wife, Heidi Nelson Cruz, seems to be just the sort of person the Tea Party supporters who celebrate her husband's anti-establishment positions love to hate.

Buck Stops With Obama on Rocky Rollout of Health Care Plan  —  The HealthCare.gov debacle has been thoroughly dissected so far by America's best health journalists and policy analysts.  To be sure, every major rollout of a new or changed social policy, including Medicare itself, is rough and takes weeks or months to resolve.

What makes HealthCare.gov so complicated?  —  Building a website in 2013 should be as easy as U-R-L, so what's the deal with HealthCare.gov?  —  The White House billed the Obamacare portal as the Kayak.com of health coverage — only instead of plane rides, it was selling health insurance.

Why Obamacare Is Like Three Mile Island  —  I've been blogging a lot over the past week or so about the risk of an insurance market “death spiral” — where young people stay away, so the only people buying insurance are old and sick, causing the cost of insurance to rise over time and pushing ever …

Health Care Law Fails to Lower Prices for Rural Areas  —  As technical failures bedevil the rollout of President Obama's health care law, evidence is emerging that one of the program's loftiest goals — to encourage competition among insurers in an effort to keep costs low — is falling short for many rural Americans.

Gansler says breaking up teen party was not his job  —  Attorney general has advocated against underage drinking  —  Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler (white shirt with cell phone, right of center) is seen in a photo posted to Instagram from a senior week party in Delaware this summer.

Inside the Messy but Moneyed Republican Plan to Neutralize the Tea Party  —  The business-friendly GOP establishment is putting its cash to work in skirmishes across the country that might reshape the 2014 elections.  —  It took a tea party insurrection that disabled the federal government …

GOP reconsiders Obamacare tactics  —  Some Republicans say a unified focus on spending levels could prove to be the strongest ground on which to fight.  Democrats loathe sequester-level spending — their 2014 budget totaled $1.058 trillion.  If all Republicans demand a clean government funding bill …

The Decline of Wikipedia  —  The sixth most widely used website in the world is not run anything like the others in the top 10.  It is not operated by a sophisticated corporation but by a leaderless collection of volunteers who generally work under pseudonyms and habitually bicker with each other.

Obamacare hearings: Oversight or heckling?  —  There's congressional oversight that answers everyone's most urgent questions - and then there's just heckling from the partisan peanut gallery.  —  Over the next few weeks, Republicans are going to have to decide which path they're …

Study: ObamaCare spending to top contractors tops $1B  —  A surge in government spending in the six months before the ObamaCare exchanges went live pushed federal spending to top government contractors over the $1 billion mark, a new study finds.  —  According to the report released Thursday …

Henninger: Obama's Credibility Is Melting  —  Here and abroad, Obama's partners are concluding they cannot trust him.

Teacher Took Students to Strip Club: Police  —  Travis Lechien, of Crown Point, Ind., faces up to one year in prison  —  A northwest Indiana teacher who allegedly took some students to a strip club and gave them alcoholic beverages at his home was terminated Tuesday night, district officials said.

Case Explores Rights of Fetus Versus Mother  —  JACKSON, Wis. — Alicia Beltran cried with fear and disbelief when county sheriffs surrounded her home on July 18 and took her in handcuffs to a holding cell.  —  She was 14 weeks pregnant and thought she had done the right thing when …

The U.S.-Saudi crackup reaches a dramatic tipping point  —  The strange thing about the crackup in U.S.-Saudi relations is that it has been on the way for more than two years, like a slow-motion car wreck, but nobody in Riyadh or Washington has done anything decisive to avert it.

NYT's Rick Berke to join POLITICO as executive editor  —  Rick Berke, the veteran New York Times editor, has been named executive editor at POLITICO.  —  Berke, who joined the Times as a reporter in 1986, replaces Jim VandeHei, who was promoted earlier this month to President and CEO of POLITICO and Capital New York.