AP: “Regrouping after a feud with Congress stalled his agenda, President Barack Obama is laying down a three-item to-do list for Congress that seems meager when compared with the bold, progressive agenda he envisioned at the start of his second term. But given the capital’s partisanship, the complexities of the issues and the limited time left, even those items — immigration, farm legislation and a budget — amount to ambitious goals that will take political muscle, skill and ever-elusive compromise to execute.”
Politico: “President Barack Obama made his plans for his newly won political capital official — he’s going to hammer House Republicans on immigration. And it’s evident from his public and private statements that Obama’s latest immigration push is, in at least one respect, similar to his fiscal showdown strategy: yet again, the goal is to boost public pressure on House Republican leadership to call a vote on a Senate-passed measure.”
“The federal health care exchange was built using 10-year-old technology that may require constant fixes and updates for the next six months and the eventual overhaul of the entire system, technology experts told USA Today.”
NBC’s Tom Costello on the company behind the problematic rollout.
“Budget reductions could render the Army at "high risk to meet even one major war," according to documents obtained by USA Today, a warning the Army is sounding because it sees another war as inevitable before long.”
Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman of New York have an op-ed in the Washington Post: “Our country has a problem with gun violence. It’s a problem for our cities and suburbs, churches and schools. Sadly, Americans have gotten used to watching massacres occur where we work and shop and where our children learn and play. With ever greater frequency, it seems, dangerous people with dangerous weapons are inflicting tragedy on individuals, families and communities. In response, responsible citizens around the nation are delivering a simple message to Washington: Keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the dangerously mentally ill. But even as we are shocked time and again by mass shootings such as those in Columbine, at Virginia Tech and inTucson, Aurora, Newtown and, most recently, at the Washington Navy Yard, Congress has produced only stalemate and dysfunction. Our national leaders have failed to pass meaningful laws to ensure that people who should not own guns cannot get them. In the absence of leadership from Washington, it is up to citizens to speak out — and imperative for state and local officials to lead.”