The White House effort to blame insurance companies for lost plans  —  “The provision in the law was the manifestation of the assurance that if you have a plan you want to keep, you can keep it.  Insurance companies that chose to strip away benefits from existing plans in the interim …

SENATOR RAND PAUL MOVES OPINION COLUMN TO BREITBART NEWS  —  Breitbart News Network is pleased to announce that it will be the new home of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul's editorial column.  —  Paul, a Tea Party favorite and son of former libertarian Congressman Ron Paul, is widely perceived …

G.O.P. Weighs Limiting Clout of Right Wing  —  Leaders of the Republican establishment, alarmed by the emergence of far-right and often unpredictable Tea Party candidates, are pushing their party to rethink how it chooses nominees and advocating changes they say would result in the selection of less extreme contenders.

At Obamacare hearings, governing by anecdote  —  It did not sound good for Sen. Pat Toomey.  —  “I'm a two-time breast cancer survivor and I'm facing the loss of insurance,” the Pennsylvania Republican declared Wednesday at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on the health-care law.

Jason Carter to challenge Gov. Deal next year  —  Democratic state Sen. Jason Carter will challenge Gov. Nathan Deal next year in a move that catapults the gubernatorial contest into the national spotlight and tests whether Georgia's changing demographics can loosen the Republican Party's 12-year grip on the state's highest office.

Report: Cuccinelli Has No Plans To Call McAuliffe  —  Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) had not called Democrat Terry McAuliffe after losing the Virginia gubernatorial race and had no plans to do so as of late Wednesday morning, according to a report in The Washington Post.

C.I.A. Is Said to Pay AT&T for Call Data  —  WASHINGTON — The C.I.A. is paying AT&T more than $10 million a year to assist with overseas counterterrorism investigations by exploiting the company's vast database of phone records, which includes Americans' international calls, according to government officials.

Democrats gird for minimum-wage battle  —  Senate Democrats plan to discuss their legislative strategy for raising the minimum wage to more than $10 an hour at a lunch meeting Thursday.  —  Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) …

Clunker progressivism  —  Barack Obama's presidency has become a feast of failures whose proliferation protects their author from close scrutiny of any one of them.  Now, however, we can revisit one of the first and see it as a harbinger of progressivism's downward stumble to HealthCare.gov.

Guns & Ammo Fires Editor After Publishing Editorial Calling for Gun Control  —  Guns and Ammo Magazine, the “world's most widely read firearms magazine,” has fired contributing editor Dick Metcalf after the publication received immense backlash for its December 2013 issue featuring his editorial advocating for gun control.

The simple question that will determine Obamacare's fate  —  BELTWAY CONFIDENTIAL OBAMACARE HEALTH CARE HEALTHCARE.GOV  —  The key to Obamacare's success or failure — provided the administration can actually learn to operate the system — is whether it helps more people than it hurts, or hurts more people than it helps.

EPA pushed to allow state carbon taxes  —  A prominent scholar says the Environmental Protection Agency should let states impose a carbon tax to meet new emissions guidelines for power plants.  —  Brookings Institution scholar Adele Morris plans to urge EPA to consider the idea …

Time to Stop the Senate Filibuster Madness  —  Blocking qualified D.C. Circuit Court nominees is all about denying a president the right to pick judges to fill vacancies.  —  Can anyone doubt that Mitch McConnell would blow up the filibuster rule in a nanosecond if he had the ability to fill all courts with radical conservatives?

Pope Francis Kisses Severely Disfigured Man And Prays With Him  —  Pope Francis blessed a man with facial deformities during today's general audience at the Vatican.  —  Pope Francis was departing St. Peter's Square after Wednesday's general audience when he saw a severely disfigured man amidst the crowd of worshippers.

Obamacare mocked at music awards  —  Obamacare took it on the chin at Wednesday night's Country Music Awards, in a skit with music stars and co-hosts Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley.  —  Paisley pretended to have hurt his back, prompting Underwood to say, “Hey, do you have that Obamacare?