Learning the hard way  —  Barack Obama may at last be getting a grip.  But he still needs to show more leadership, at home and abroad  —  HILLARY CLINTON'S most effective quip, in her long struggle with Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination last year, was that the Oval Office is no place for on-the-job training.

Obama order worries free speech groups  —  Free speech advocates from across the political spectrum are accusing President BarackObama of impinging on First Amendment rights and are gearing up to take their case public.  —  At issue is an unprecedented directive that Obama …

White House Debate Led to Plan to Widen Afghan Effort  —  WASHINGTON — President Obama's plan to widen United States involvement in Afghanistan came after an internal debate in which Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. warned against getting into a political and military quagmire …

Police identify 200 children as potential terrorists  —  Drastic new tactics to prevent school pupils as young as 13 falling into extremism  —  Two hundred schoolchildren in Britain, some as young as 13, have been identified as potential terrorists by a police scheme that aims to spot youngsters who are …

Reid To Cave To Bayh On Cram-Down?  —  Earlier this month, the House of Representatives passed cram-down legislation designed to allow judges to write down the principal and interest on some mortgages to allow homeowners to stay in their homes, a goal that is a central pillar of President Obama's housing legislation.

Weeks of Obama's budget sales pitch and support still slips  —  Now, we know why the White House laid on the immense trans-continental public relations offensive over its immense budget these past two-to-three weeks.  —  The Gallup Poll did another one this week on President Obama's $3,550,000,000,000 budget …

ShamWow Guy In Slap, Chop Bust  —  TV pitchman battered hooker in South Beach hotel room brawl  —  Meet Vince Shlomi.  He's probably better known to you as the ShamWow Guy, the ubiquitous television pitchman who has been phenomenally successful peddling absorbent towels and food choppers.

The Return of Weakness  —  President Obama means well.  Iran doesn't.  —  In diplomacy and espionage, there is no worse mistake than “mirror-imaging,” that is, ascribing to foreigners your own actions and views.  For Westerners this is especially debilitating, given our modern proclivity …

Obama's Man on the Budget: Just 40 and Going Like 60  —  WASHINGTON — At 6 in the morning, Peter R. Orszag is racing: across wet pavement for a 35-minute run, into a shower and a suit, and through a living room that looks rather like an office, the walls painted presidential gold and hung with pictures of federal monuments.

Bank Executives May Keep TARP Funds After Meeting With Obama  —  Bank executives indicated they are willing to hold onto U.S. government aid to help stabilize the financial system and pull the economy out of recession.  —  Thirteen chief executive officers of the nation's biggest financial institutions met …

Goldman Bailed Out 2 Executives  —  The financial giant Goldman Sachs spent tens of millions of dollars to bail out two senior executives last fall who were short on cash, according to the bank's proxy statement filed on Friday.  —  In an unusual move, Goldman bought back stakes …

Building Good Roads  —  One problem in our transportation policy is that funding is unduly weighted to spending money on roads rather than spending money on mass transit.  Another problem in our transportation policy is that funding is unduly weighted to building new roads rather than to doing …

Campaign Statement  —  The decision of the Board of Election to remove my name from the ballot proves once again that the political system in New York is rigged by professionals to make sure that average citizens are excluded from the process.  While the two major parties could choose …