memeorandum: Chris Matthews Takes A Crack At Chris Christie And Wife (Ashley Alman/The Huffington Post)

3:15 PM ET, November 8, 2013

Top Items:

Exclusive: Obama's Secret Iran Détente — Long before a nuclear deal was in reach, the U.S. was quietly lifting some of the financial pressure on Iran, a Daily Beast investigation reveals. How the sanctions were softened. — The Obama administration began softening sanctions …

Discussion: The Dish, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, Taylor Marsh, Weasel Zippers, Roger L. Simon, The Gateway Pundit, Patterico's Pontifications and Wall Street Journal

Sam Stein / The Huffington Post:

Obama Considers Administrative Fix To Health Care Law — WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is considering a fix to the president's health care law that would expand the universe of individuals who receive tax subsidies to help buy insurance, an administration source told The Huffington Post.

Discussion: Daily Kos, National Review, Forbes, The Incidental Economist and Ross Douthat

Ron Fournier / NationalJournal.com:

I'm Sorry, Too, Mr. President — Obama apologizes for breaking promise on health care reform. — I'm sorry, too, Mr. President. — I'm sorry you couldn't finesse a single Republican vote for health insurance reform in 2010. — I'm sorry Republicans decided to re-litigate the law rather …

Discussion: Yahoo! News, Associated Press, Right Turn, The Gateway Pundit, Hot Air, Politico, Conservatives4Palin and Wall Street Journal

Chuck Todd / U.S. News:
Exclusive: Obama personally apologizes for Americans losing health coverage

Juliet Eilperin / Washington Post:
President Obama apologizes to Americans who are losing their health insurance

Discussion: The Hill, Prairie Weather, Hot Air, The Fix and Betsy's Page

Peggy Noonan / Wall Street Journal:

Noonan: 'I'm Gonna Be the Republican Nominee' — Mitch McConnell on the shutdown's failure, ObamaCare's future, and his own primary challenge. — Washington — It is a month since the government shutdown and a day after the election. The minority leader of the U.S. Senate …

Discussion: Hot Air, Talking Points Memo, No More Mister Nice Blog, First Read and Connecting.the.Dots

Andrew Kohut / Wall Street Journal:

The GOP Is in Better Shape Than You Think — Independents favor the GOP on handling the economy by a whopping 46%-30% margin. — Tucked away in recent polls—which have documented the extraordinary anger directed at the Republican Party during the shutdown crisis—are measures of clear disappointment with the Democratic Party.

Discussion: VodkaPundit, Questions and Observations, CANNONFIRE and The Reaction

New York Times:

CBS Correspondent Apologizes for Report on Benghazi Attack — The correspondent for the disputed “60 Minutes” segment about the attack on the United States Special Mission in Benghazi, Libya, last year apologized on the air Friday morning, saying it was a “mistake” to put …

Discussion: AMERICAblog News, Talking Points Memo, Erik Wemple, Guardian, Daily Kos and The Raw Story, more at Mediagazer »

Noah Rothman / Mediaite:

CBS 60 Minutes' Lara Logan Apologizes for Erroneous Benghazi Survivor Report: ‘We Were Wrong’ — CBS 60 Minutes reporter Lara Logan admitted on Friday that a person who claimed to have been witness to the deadly September 11, 2012 attack on an American consulate in Benghazi and who served …

Discussion: The Daily Banter and Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion

New York Times:
Accounts Differ to F.B.I. and CBS on Benghazi

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, Crooks and Liars, Politico, NBCNews, Foreign Policy, AMERICAblog News, The Raw Story, ThinkProgress, Taylor Marsh, Poynter, Liberaland, The Huffington Post, Business Insider, Capital New York, Little Green Footballs and CNN, more at Mediagazer »

David Simpson / CNN:
‘We were wrong’: CBS's Lara Logan apologizes for Benghazi report

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, Voices and The Raw Story

Pew Research Center for the People and the Press:

Obama's Second-Term Slide Continues — 65% Disapprove of his Handling of Economy — Barack Obama has had a difficult year since his reelection victory. His overall job rating stands at 41%, down 14 points since last December. A majority (53%) now disapproves of the way he is handling his job as president.

Discussion: NationalJournal.com, Post Politics, Business Insider, Hot Air, Weasel Zippers, Politico and Taegan Goddard's …

Shahien Nasiripour / The Huffington Post:

New York Fed Chief Levels Explosive Charge Against Big Banks — The head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said Thursday that some of America's largest financial institutions appear to lack respect for the law, a potentially explosive charge against an industry already roiling …

Discussion: ThinkProgress, Firedoglake and Washington Wire

William C. Dudley / newyorkfed.org:
Ending Too Big to Fail

Discussion: Real Time Economics

Jordan Weissmann / The Atlantic Online:

Yep, Being a Young, American Adult Is a Financial Nightmare — Here are the graphs to prove it. — Poverty is an astonishingly common experience here in the world's richest country. As I wrote this morning, almost 40 percent of American adults experience it for at least a year by age 60.

Discussion: The Dish

Frank Newport / Gallup:

Most Uninsured Americans Ignoring Health Exchange Sites — Three in 10 are familiar with the exchanges — PRINCETON, NJ — In the midst of widespread news coverage of problems with the federal health exchange website, relatively few uninsured Americans (18%) — the primary target population …

Discussion: Politico, Hot Air, Post Politics, Talking Points Memo, Right Wing News, The Daily Caller and First Read

Noah Rothman / Mediaite:

Former MSNBC Host's Health Plan Cancelled, New Plan Costs 3.5 Times More — “Thnx Mr. President.” That's all former MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan had to say to President Barack Obama on Thursday when he announced that the health insurance plan he purchased on the individual market after leaving the news network was being cancelled.

Discussion: The Gateway Pundit, No More Mister Nice Blog, Weasel Zippers, Twitchy and Instapundit

Ashley Alman / The Huffington Post:

Chris Matthews Takes A Crack At Chris Christie And Wife — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's weight has been a key concern during his years in the public eye, prompting the release of a medical report declaring Christie “fit to serve as governor” during his reelection campaign last month.

Discussion: Hot Air and Weasel Zippers

Tal Kopan / Politico:
Bill O'Reilly: Chris Christie won't do my show

Discussion: Talking Points Memo

New York Times:

Rules to Require Equal Coverage for Mental Ills — WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday will complete a generation-long effort to require insurers to cover care for mental health and addiction just like physical illnesses when it issues long-awaited regulations defining parity in benefits and treatment.

Discussion: Capital New York, ThinkProgress, Post Politics and Shakesville

Jen Christensen / CNN: Feds boosting mental health access, treatment

Brian Beutler / Salon:

GOP's intolerance trap: How ENDA fight explains all of U.S. politics — America's liberalization has coincided with the right's increasing extremism. Is the House GOP running out of time? — Back in September of 1996, when the ideological sorting of the country's two major political parties …

Discussion: The Plum Line, Liberaland and Booman Tribune

Lynne Marek / Chicago Business:

Onion quits print — The Onion is halting its print version in Chicago and its two other remaining markets with its Dec. 12 issue. The newsweekly was 25 years old and is survived by its website and a new creative service for advertisers. — “It's sad to see a print edition no longer exist …

Discussion: The Verge, The Switch and Poynter, more at Mediagazer »

Noah Bierman / The Boston Globe:

Scott Brown gets a plea to run in N.H. — WASHINGTON — The signs are mounting. Scott Brown travels almost weekly to New Hampshire. Last month he formed a political action committee there to raise funds; this week he attacked the state's Democratic senator on his favorite target: national health care.

Discussion: Weekly Standard, Talking Points Memo, Roll Call and Post Politics

Paul Krugman / New York Times:

The Mutilated Economy — Five years and eleven months have now passed since the U.S. economy entered recession. Officially, that recession ended in the middle of 2009, but nobody would argue that we've had anything like a full recovery. Official unemployment remains high …

Discussion: Campaign for America's Future and BillMoyers.com

Benjamin Weiser / New York Times:

Pine Bush, N.Y., School District Faces Accusations of Anti-Semitism — The swastikas, the students recalled, seemed to be everywhere: on walls, desks, lockers, textbooks, computer screens, a playground slide — even on a student's face. — A picture of President Obama …

Discussion: Capital New York

New York Times:

Kerry Joins European Officials at Iran Nuclear Talks — GENEVA — Secretary of State John Kerry arrived here on Friday to lead a concerted diplomatic push to close an interim nuclear deal with Iran, though he cautioned before plunging into negotiations, “There are important gaps that have to be closed.”