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 …

Post-Plagiarism Restructuring, Rand Paul's Opinion Column Moves To Breitbart  —  Following allegations of plagiarism that caused a shake-up in the senator's office, Rand Paul's (R-KY) opinion column has found a new home at Breitbart News.  —  “Paul is pleased to partner with Breitbart News …

“I need f—in 10 minutes to make sure he's dead': New Rob Ford video surfaces  —  A new video has surfaced showing Mayor Rob Ford acting wildly and belligerent and using threatening words including “kill” and “murder” with reference to an unidentified person.

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.

Republican Senate Candidate Jokes About Obama Being From Kenya (AUDIO)  —  Colorado state Sen. Owen Hill considered telling a Kenyan kid “Well, you know what, we already have someone from Kenya as President of the United States.”  Update: Hill says it was an “obvious joke.”  —  Source: OwenHillForSenate.com

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.

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.

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.

Bohlinger runs for Senate  —  HELENA — Former Lt. Gov. John Bohlinger said Wednesday he decided to run for the U.S. Senate after the receiving considerable support and encouragement from Montanans in the past four months.  —  Bohlinger, 77, a Democrat from Helena, also said he was motivated …

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.

F.D.A. Ruling Would All but Eliminate Trans Fats  —  The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday proposed measures that would all but eliminate artificial trans fats, the artery clogging substance that is a major contributor to heart disease in the United States, from the food supply.

Saudi nuclear weapons ‘on order’ from Pakistan  —  Saudi Arabia has invested in Pakistani nuclear weapons projects, and believes it could obtain atomic bombs at will, a variety of sources have told BBC Newsnight.  —  While the kingdom's quest has often been set in the context …

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.

Congressman: Giving Undocumented Students In-State Tuition Is ‘Rewarding Bad Behavior’  —  Students who grew up their entire life in Florida shouldn't be allowed to pay in-state tuition at one of the state's public universities if they are undocumented because doing so would reward “bad behavior …

Fishbowl's Betsy Rothstein to Daily Caller  —  Betsy Rothstein, the former Fishbowl DC editor, is joining the conservative website The Daily Caller, POLITICO has learned.  —  Starting Monday, Rothstein will oversee a new blog called “The Mirror,” where she will cover Washington media, gossip and politics.

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.

Tea Party Game Show With Guest Host Cass Sunstein  —  Cass Sunstein recently published two short essays-here and here-on the current political struggles between “tea-party” conservatives and progressives.  In the first essay, Sunstein attempts to link our current political fracturing …

Austerity and stupidity  —  Today's austerity, many argue, is stupid.  This column argues that today's EZ austerity may arise from stupidity before the crisis - specifically lacklustre structural reform.  Excess debt arose in nations maintaining unsustainable living standards and welfare systems in the face of poor growth.