CBS poll: “Forty-nine percent advocate stricter gun laws, while 36 percent think gun laws should be kept as they are, and 12 percent think they should be made less strict.”
Robert Draper looks at the power of the NRA for the New York Times magazine.
USA Today looks at the problems Oregon has had in signing people up for the health law.
Pop singer Adam Levine is on the Obamacare train, urging young people to sign up for the law.
There are more problems emerging about the sign-language interpreter at the Mandela memorial, including that he claims to have heard voices on stage, that he saw angels in the stadium, and that he has previously been violent.
Pete Rouse sounds like he may be finally leaving the White House. Obama told the New York Times: “It will be a tough loss. … But it may be a situation where he feels more comfortable with some discreet assignments here and there, and certainly I will continue to rely on him for the good counsel and advice that I really can’t get from any other people in this town.”
More: “Mr. Rouse began building the Obama organization in 2004, plotting strategy especially about matters in the Senate (where he was once called ‘the 101st senator’), and serving as a sounding board for Cabinet members and junior aides, as well as the president’s troubleshooter. He has been as crucial to Mr. Obama as any presidential adviser in history, like Harry Hopkins to Franklin D. Roosevelt, said former Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, for whom Mr. Rouse worked for 19 years, including as chief of staff for a decade, when Mr. Daschle was the Democratic Senate leader.”
Former President George W. Bush sent the Alabama kicker who missed the 57-yard field goal against Auburn a letter. Bush told the kicker, “Life has its setbacks. I know!"
“The Obama administration is working to help Holocaust survivors in the United States, many of them living in poverty, by coordinating assistance, working with aid groups and using diplomatic means to help recover property confiscated during the Nazi era,” AP writes. “Vice President Joe Biden announced the effort this week in a speech to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The administration says 100,000 Holocaust survivors are in the United States, and 25 percent live below the poverty level.”
“Skype publicized Vice President Joe Biden’s Wednesday immigration chat as a chance for regular people to pose questions directly to the Obama administration,” Politico writes. “But those who actually got to speak directly with Biden were first recruited by Skype and vetted by the White House.”
National Journal: “Ayo Kimathi, the Department of Homeland Security employee who had an alter ego as a militant black supremacist, has finally left the agency, months after his radical moonlighting was outed.”
Here are the most Facebook-ed events/people of 2013. Pope Francis gets the top spot, followed by the election and the royal baby.