“This is not a win for anybody. This is a loss for the American people,” Obama says as cuts are set to begin taking effect.

Speaker of the House John Boehner talks briefly after a meeting with President Obama.

Image by Larry Downing / Reuters

WASHINGTON — A perfunctory meeting between President Obama and congressional leaders resulted in no progress on staving off a set of $85 billion in mandatory spending cuts set to begin taking effect this afternoon, and both sides were digging in for a long, drawn-out battle.

"It may take a couple of weeks, it may take a couple of months. But I'm going to keep on pushing on it," Obama told reporters following his midmorning meeting with Speaker John Boehner, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

"We will get through this as well. Even with these cuts in place, folks across the country, and making sure the republic will keep going," Obama said, adding, "But Washington sure isn't making it easy."

But he clearly sought to lay the blame at the feet of congressional Republicans.

"Every time we get a piece of econ news over the next month, the next two months the next six months … As long as the sequester is in place, we'll know that economic news could have been better if Congress hadn't failed to act," he said, charging it is "a choice Republicans in Congress have made … because they refuse to budge in closing a single wasteful loophole."

According to Boehner's office, during the meeting Republicans reiterated their position that Obama and Reid must first pass legislation out of the Senate before the House will act, and warned they will not accept any legislation changing the sequester that includes new revenues.

One bright spot, however, is that it now appears increasingly likely that Congress will act by the end of next week to avoid a government shutdown, which will likely be a rare bipartisan bright spot in Washington.

“Give me an example of what I might do,” the President says in a sequester-themed press conference responding to question from Bloomberg's Julianna Goldman. Another testy exchange with the press.

Source: youtube.com

President Obama made a confusing reference about a “jedi mind-meld.” BuzzFeed breaks down the president's galactic gaffe.

In a press conference Friday, President Obama gave this answer to a question about the sequester:

Observe:

Star Trek and Star Wars fans everywhere:

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The tumultuous world of politics is no Disney movie…but wouldn't it be so much better if it was? Here are some key political players along with their animated counterparts.

Cory Booker - Rajah

Via, Via

Chris Christie - Baloo

Via, Via

Dianne Feinstein - Big Mama

Via, Via

Paul Ryan - Copper

Via, Via

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Outlets from Huffington Post to National Review carried pieces financed by the Malaysian government. An international campaign against Anwar Ibrahim.

Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak (R) talks to Foreign Minister Anifah Aman outside Razak's office in Putrajaya, near Kuala Lumpur on February 28.

Image by Bazuki Muhammad / Reuters

A range of mainstream American publications printed paid propaganda for the government of Malaysia, much of it focused on the campaign against a pro-democracy figure there.

The payments to conservative American opinion writers — whose work appeared in outlets from the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner to the Washington Times to National Review and RedState — emerged in a filing this week to the Department of Justice. The filing under the Foreign Agent Registration Act outlines a campaign spanning May 2008 to April 2011 and led by Joshua Trevino, a conservative pundit, who received $389,724.70 under the contract and paid smaller sums to a series of conservative writers.

Trevino lost his column at the Guardian last year after allegations that his relationship with Malaysian business interests wasn't being disclosed in columns dealing with Malaysia. Trevino told Politico in 2011 that "I was never on any 'Malaysian entity's payroll,' and I resent your assumption that I was."

According to Trevino's belated federal filing, the interests paying Trevino were in fact the government of Malaysia, "its ruling party, or interests closely aligned with either." The Malaysian government has been accused of multiple human rights abuses and restricting the press and personal freedoms. Anwar, the opposition leader, has faced prosecution for sodomy, a prosecution widely denounced in the West, which Trevino defended as more "nuanced" than American observers realized. The government for which Trevino worked also attacked Anwar for saying positive things about Israel; Trevino has argued that Anwar is not the pro-democracy figure he appears.

The federal filing specified that Trevino was engaged through the lobbying firm APCO Worldwide and the David All Group, an American online consulting firm. The contract also involved a firm called FBC (short for Fact-Based Communications), whose involvement in covert propaganda prompted a related scandal and forced an executive at The Atlantic to resign from its board.

According to the filings, Trevino was also employed to write for websites called MalaysiaMatters and MalaysiaWatcher.

Trevino's subcontractors included conservative writer Ben Domenech, who made $36,000 from the arrangement, and Rachel Ehrenfeld, the director of the American Center for Democracy, who made $30,000. Seth Mandel, an editor at Commentary, made $5,500 (his byline is attached to the National Review item linked to above). Brad Jackson, writing at the time for RedState, made $24,700. Overall, 10 writers were part of the arrangement.

"It was actually a fairly standard PR operation," Trevino told BuzzFeed Friday. "To be blunt with you, and I think the filing is clear about this, it was a lot looser than a typical PR operation. I wanted to respect these guys' independence and not have them be placement machines."

Trevino said neither he nor the client knew what the writers were going to write before it went up.

"I provided a stipend to support their work in this area and they would just ping me whenever something went up," he said.

Domenech, a former Washington Post blogger who runs a daily morning newsletter called The Transom, said he "was retained by Josh's Trevino Strategies and Media PR firm in 2010 with the general guidance to write about Malaysia, particularly the political scene there."

"I did not ever have anyone looking over my shoulder for what I wrote, and the guidance really was just to write about the political fray there and give my own opinion," Domenech said. "Of course, Josh picked me knowing what my opinion was — I stand by what I wrote at the time and I continue to be critical of Anwar Ibrahim, who I think is a particularly dangerous fellow."

Domenech attached two pieces he'd written about Malaysia for the San Francisco Examiner as well as one for the Huffington Post in his email to BuzzFeed.

Chuck DeVore, the Vice President for Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation (where Trevino now works), said he was unaware of the arrangement in an email.

"He knew of my expertise and suggested I write some pieces," DeVore said. "As I've seen over the years, it's not uncommon for freelancers to be paid for their work from various sources. I frankly didn't think much of it, having been paid by papers in a few nations abroad and by PR firms, such as the one Mr. Trevino was running at the time."

"He never told me who his client was," DeVore said. "I wonder if they did the same via him? Interesting that he filed the paperwork, given it appears he was working for someone else."

Mandel said, "I was blogging about issues relating to Israel and anti-Semitism in 2010, and Josh approached me about a Malaysian opposition figure who had made anti-Semitic comments and was affiliated with anti-Israel organizations. I had full editorial freedom — Josh never saw anything I wrote until after it was published — and I had no relationship with the Malaysian government. I was paid by Josh for what was probably a handful of blog posts in the fall of 2010, I believe, while working as a freelancer in Washington."

According to Trevino, he was approached by publicist and social media executive David All in 2008. He never had contact with "the ultimate client," he said. "I only had an assumption of who I was working for. I never knew exactly who APCO was dealing with, never knew exactly who FBC was dealing with."

Trevino acknowledged that he shouldn't have lied to BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith, then at Politico, when this first came up in 2011.

"When Ben Smith contacted me in July 2011, I ought to have come clean with him at the time," he said.

As for why he waited until five years after the fact to register with FARA, Trevino said he didn't know he was supposed to have registered until recently.

"The accurate answer is that I didn't know there was a foreign agents database at all." Trevino said. "When all the stuff with the Guardian went down in August, I had a friend ask me whether I regeistered with FARA and I said what's FARA?"

"They allowed me to do a retroactive filing," he said.

Trevino terminated his relationship with Malaysian interests when he joined the Texas Public Policy Foundation, he said.

This article has been updated to include comments from Mandel.

Update 2:33 p.m.: Trevino called back to say that he had actually checked with his legal counsel in 2011 after being questioned by Politico, but had been told at the time that he didn't need to register anywhere.

"Ben Smith had actually asked me if I was a foreign agent back in 2011," Trevino said. "I asked a lawyer friend, my counsel. I said, hey, is there anything I need to comply with? He came back and said no."

"After the Guardian thing, I reached out to a different counsel, and I did some googling and found out about FARA," Trevino said.

UPDATE: Trevino's Malaysia-related posts have been removed from the Huffington Post and replaced with an editors' note that says the author "violated blogger guidelines by not properly disclosing financial ties that amounted to a serious conflict of interest."

Rep. Tom Cole thinks thinks his conference's most conservative members will need to mellow out to get anything done. “Over time I think they'll get better,” Cole hopes.

Image by Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

WASHINGTON — Conservative Republicans in the House are impeding legislative progress in Congress, and Republican Rep. Tom Cole is fed up.

"They think they've been elected to the House of Commons, where all power is concentrated in one chamber," said Cole, an ally of House Speaker John Boehner, who has often found himself at odds with the most conservative members of the conference. "The speaker is not the prime minister," and, Cole added, "just being able to get something through the House doesn't mean much."

In an interview with BuzzFeed, Cole recalled the drama preceding a fiscal cliff deal, when House Republicans scuttled Boehner's own "Plan B" before it could come to a vote, an outcome widely interpreted as a sign of House leadership's lack of control over the conference.

"You can't get people who won't vote for Boehner's 'Plan B,' and then wonder why they end up with the fiscal cliff deal they do," Cole said.

Shortly thereafter, a few of those same members decided to oppose Boehner in his reelection for speaker — and, in Cole's assessment, "play(ed) fast and loose with the speaker election on television."

"I don't have a lot of sympathy for that behavior," Cole added. "It's like amateur night at the Bijou."

Cole doesn't think this bloc of members will necessarily have an incentive to change this behavior in the short term, which could deepen the legislative puzzle facing House leaders. But he is hopeful that they will evolve and become more amenable to compromise with time.

"This is a pretty new conference," Cole said. "Over time I think they'll get better."

An unconventional prize at the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation reception.

Image by J. Scott Applewhite / AP

WASHINGTON — If lawmakers want to tackle gun control, they might look first to the firearms being given away within the halls of Congress.

At a "Welcome to Congress" reception for members of the Congressional Sportmen's Caucus on Tuesday, the Congressional Sportmen's Foundation raffled off a range of prizes, including a Browning Silver shotgun, according to a source who was present at the event.

The reception was held in the Cannon House office building, directly across the street from the Capitol. According to a press release from the foundation, the program "included 46 bipartisan Members of Congress, from both sides of the Capitol, focused on common issues of concern to sportsmen and women and served as an opportunity for members of the CSC to jointly agree on the need to move bipartisan, pro-sportsmen legislation in this Congress."

Sen. Kay Hagan and Reps. Bob Latta, Bennie Thompson, Rob Wittman and Tim Walz attended the event, among other members of Congress, staffers, and other attendees.

“The basic principle that America is founded on — the idea that we're all created equal — applies to everybody, regardless of sexual orientation, as well as race or gender or religion or ethnicity,” Obama says.

WASHINGTON — President Obama explained some of his reasoning behind Thursday's decision to weigh in on the challenge to California's Proposition 8 marriage amendment, saying, "I felt it was important for us to articulate what I believe and what this administration stands for."

On the issue of marriage equality broadly, he said at a Friday news conference, "I think that the same evolution that I've gone through is an evolution that the country as a whole has gone through."

Tying his evolution on marriage to the nation's views, Obama put into effect one of his regularly used tools: Organizing public opinion to back his view, to bring people along with him rather than to force the issue on his own.

This is not the first time the president has sought to take this route with advancing LGBT rights. The process utilized in the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" gave Pentagon and military leadership the space and time, through the year-long internal review of repeal implementation, to become comfortable with the idea and go through an evolution of their own.

Saying that the Supreme Court "called the question" when it took the Proposition 8 case, Obama said Friday, "If the Supreme Court asks me or my Attorney General or Solicitor General, do we think that meets constitutional muster, I felt it was important for us to answer that question honestly — and the answer is no."

Here's the full question and answer:

Q Mr. President, your administration weighed in yesterday on the Proposition 8 case. A few months ago it looked like you might be averse to doing that, and I just wondered if you could talk a little bit about your deliberations and how your thinking evolved on that. Were there conversations that were important to you? Were there things that you read that influenced your thinking?

THE PRESIDENT: As everybody here knows, last year, upon a long period of reflection, I concluded that we cannot discriminate against same-sex couples when it comes to marriage; that the basic principle that America is founded on -- the idea that we're all created equal -- applies to everybody, regardless of sexual orientation, as well as race or gender or religion or ethnicity.

And I think that the same evolution that I've gone through is an evolution that the country as a whole has gone through. And I think it is a profoundly positive thing. So that when the Supreme Court essentially called the question by taking this case about California's law, I didn't feel like that was something that this administration could avoid. I felt it was important for us to articulate what I believe and what this administration stands for.

And although I do think that we're seeing, on a state-by-state basis, progress being made -- more and more states recognizing same-sex couples and giving them the opportunity to marry and maintain all the benefits of marriage that heterosexual couples do -- when the Supreme Court asks, do you think that the California law, which doesn't provide any rationale for discriminating against same-sex couples other than just the notion that, well, they're same-sex couples, if the Supreme Court asks me or my Attorney General or Solicitor General, do we think that meets constitutional muster, I felt it was important for us to answer that question honestly -- and the answer is no.

Q And given the fact that you do hold that position about gay marriage, I wonder if you thought about just -- once you made the decision to weigh in, why not just argue that marriage is a right that should be available to all people of this country?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, that's an argument that I've made personally. The Solicitor General in his institutional role going before the Supreme Court is obliged to answer the specific question before them. And the specific question presented before the Court right now is whether Prop 8 and the California law is unconstitutional.

And what we've done is we've put forward a basic principle, which is -- which applies to all equal protection cases. Whenever a particular group is being discriminated against, the Court asks the question, what's the rationale for this -- and it better be a good reason. And if you don't have a good reason, we're going to strike it down.

And what we've said is, is that same-sex couples are a group, a class that deserves heightened scrutiny, that the Supreme Court needs to ask the state why it's doing it. And if the state doesn't have a good reason, it should be struck down. That's the core principle as applied to this case.

Now, the Court may decide that if it doesn't apply in this case, it probably can't apply in any case. There's no good reason for it. If I were on the Court, that would probably be the view that I'd put forward. But I'm not a judge, I'm the President. So the basic principle, though, is let's treat everybody fairly and let's treat everybody equally. And I think that the brief that's been presented accurately reflects our views.

With buttons.

NJDC's buttons.

The National Jewish Democratic Council is launching a campaign in support of President Obama on Friday in advance of the AIPAC conference this weekend.

The effort is an answer to a similar, though much larger campaign run by the neo-conservative Emergency Committee for Israel around last year's AIPAC conference that criticized Obama's record on Israel. And it comes after weeks of fighting over the president's nomination of Chuck Hagel to Secretary of Defense, the aftermath of which is sure to be a major undercurrent of the conference this year.

"We will continue to fight against the mud slinging by anti-Obama partisan operatives and elected officials who are looking to score cheap political points," said Aaron Keyak, executive director of the NJDC.

"In a time when Washington, DC is becoming increasingly polarized along party lines, AIPAC Policy Conference is a place to appreciate the deep, bipartisan support for the U.S.-Israel relationship," Keyak said.

The NJDC's buttons will read: "Proud Pro-Israel Dem."

But the group may face an uphill battle at the conference of the pro-Israel group, which has faced criticism for refusing to oppose Hagel, despite his relatively cool stance toward the U.S. Israel relationship. The Emergency Committee plastered Washington with posters and produced a 30-minute video as part of an expensive anti-Hagel campaign that also included a wave of mailings from another group. But AIPAC has generally chosen to avoid battles over personnel, rather than policy, and the Democratic group aims to offer a counterbalance to the grumbling in the ranks.

The Democratic group is also publishing an op-ed in the Times of Israel by its chairman Marc Stanley and has created a section of their website to highlighting moments in Obama's relationship with Israel and a Facebook graphic.

Communities across the country brace for the impact of the sequester.

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“[W]e can now see that the understandings on which DOMA was premised have not survived our nation’s increased knowledge about same-sex families or our modern understanding of what equality requires,” the senators write. The brief is one of several filed today in support of Edith Windsor's challenge to DOMA.

Image by Macey Foronda/Buzzfeed

WASHINGTON — Former Senators Bill Bradley, Tom Daschle, Christopher Dodd and Alan Simpson — all of whom voted for the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 — told the Supreme Court Friday that "the original justifications for DOMA can no longer be credited today," concluding that "our constitutional commitment to equality does not tolerate such discrimination."

In urging the Supreme Court to strike down the federal prohibition on recognizing the state-sanctioned marriages of same-sex couples, the former senators tell the court:

DOMA is an especially poor candidate for any claim of deference to the constitutional judgment of the political braches. It was enacted hastily, with little independent consideration of its constitutionality, against the backdrop of a constitutional jurisprudence this Court has since abandoned. It was premised in large part on fears that subsequent experience has proven unfounded. And it effects a discrimination that we now have come to recognize as incompatible with our constitutional commitment to equal treatment under the law.

After detailing societal and legal changes — from state marriage law to the military — they conclude, "In short, the suggestion that our country's vital institutions need protection from gay families has been thoroughly discredited by our national experience."

Regardless of whether the Constitution prohibits the federal government from treating those gay and lesbian couples differently under the law, a group of law professors who hold differing views on that question told the Supreme Court that the DOMA is nonetheless unconstitutional because Congress has no right to pass such a law.

As groups and people opposing the Defense of Marriage Act's federal definition of marriage file amici curiae, or friends of the court, briefs in advance of Friday's deadline, the professors — primarily those with a libertarian focus in their work — oppose DOMA as an unconstitutional intrusion on states' rights to define marriage.

This federalism argument has figured into the reason why two federal appeals courts have struck down Section 3 of DOMA, the federal definition of "marriage" and "spouse," as unconstitutional. It is not, however, directly advanced by either Edith Windsor, the lesbian widow challenging DOMA at the Supreme Court, or the Obama administration, which has taken Windsor's side in the case.

Several former senior cabinet and agency officials, including Health and Human Services secretaries under Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton — Louis Sullivan and and Donna Shalala, respectively — also filed a brief opposing DOMA on Friday. Other department or agencies represented among those who signed the brief are the Social Security Administration, the Department of Defense, the Department of Labor, the Office of Personnel Management, the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Contrary to the defense of the law raised by House Republican leaders, the brief argues that "Section 3 of DOMA does not ease administrative burdens or simplify the determinations made by federal agencies." The officials go on to note, "Despite significant differences among the states over the validity of marriages, Congress never imposed a single federal benchmark before 1996 and then did so only with respect to one particular aspect of marital eligibility."

Military and intelligence officials — from former Defense Secretary William Cohen and counterterrorism official Richard Clarke to retired Army Lt. Gen. Claudia Kennedy and retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark — spoke out against the impact of DOMA on the military after the end of "don't ask, don't tell."

Calling the limits that DOMA places on servicemembers "simply untenable," the brief — authored by prominent Supreme Court lawyer Carter Phillips of Sidley Austin — contends that "DOMA harms the military by depriving a subset of legally married servicemembers and their families of the very benefits—including healthcare, housing, equal pay, and survivorship benefits—that common sense, military experience, and research have demonstrated to be essential to all military families and more fundamentally to military effectiveness."

Other briefs have come in from 212 members of Congress, the American Bar Association and, perhaps most surprisingly, a former CIA officer who argues that "DOMA dissuades countless patriotic and intelligent Americans from entering or continuing federal service, regardless of the agency involved."

The professors who signed on to the federalism-focused brief are Jonathan Adler from Case Western Reserve University School of Law, Lynn Baker from the University of Texas School of Law, Randy Barnett from Georgetown University Law Center, Dale Carpenter from the University of Minnesota Law School, Ilya Somin from George Mason University School of Law, and Ernest Young from Duke Law School.

In explaining Friday's filing, however, the law professors write:

The signatories of this brief hold a variety of opinions about same-sex marriage and about how the Constitution's individual-rights provisions may bear on regulation of those marriages. But we agree that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is an unconstitutional and unprecedented incursion into States' police powers.

Describing why, they note, "DOMA shatters two centuries of federal practice. Read plainly and fairly, DOMA creates, for the first time, a blanket federal marital status that exists independent of States' family-status determinations."

Addressing the House Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group's defense of the law, they conclude:

DOMA falls outside Congress's powers. Marriage is not commercial activity, and DOMA is not limited to federal-benefit programs that might rest on the Spending Clause. Any action by Congress that falls outside its specifically enumerated powers must be justified under the Necessary and Proper Clause, and DOMA cannot pass that test. ...

BLAG is wrong. The legitimacy of same-sex marriage is a difficult and divisive issue, yet it is one that our federalism has been addressing with considerable success. Congress may regulate in this area to the extent necessary to further its enumerated powers. But it may not simply reject the States' policy judgments as if it had the same authority to make domestic-relations law as they do.

The former CIA officer, Graham Segroves, worked for the CIA from 2002 through 2012, and argues that "one of the Federal Government's most essential functions is to defend national security." To that end, he tells the court:

Our Nation's foreign enemies typically speak languages far different from our own, practice customs far different from our own, and, in some cases, do not recognize our right to exist. As a result, the threats that face our Nation today are exceedingly complex. Our defense against those threats requires a diverse workforce of dedicated public servants with unique skill sets, including the ability to speak foreign languages, understand foreign customs, operate discreetly within foreign nations, and develop leading-edge technologies.

DOMA hampers the Federal Government's ability to attract and retain the personnel necessary to meet these unique challenges.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the DOMA challenge, United States v. Windsor, on March 27.

Former Senators, Opposing DOMA

Federalism Professors, Opposing DOMA

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School parliamentarian!

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“This is not a movie role, this is a job application,” says one Kentucky Democratic operative of Judd's potential Senate run.

Actress Ashley Judd, a potential Democratic U.S. Senate candidate from Kentucky, speaks at a George Washington University forum called, Progress and Perspectives: Women's Reproductive Health in Washington, D.C., Friday, March 1, 2013.

Image by Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/MCT

Actress Ashley Judd held her bluegrass culture banner high Friday afternoon in a speech at George Washington University on women's reproductive health, further fueling speculation that she is mulling a U.S. Senate run against Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell in 2014.

But her efforts to gussy up up her attachment to the south during the speech and Q&A session — complete with words like "feller," "mawmaw," and "y'all" — were met with some skepticism by political observers on Twitter, and in her home state.

"She needs to come home and have the conversation with Kentuckians about whether or not they want her to run," said Democratic operative Dale Emmons.

He added that her accent and use of "ya'll" might be authentic, but she should use that voice in her home state before considering a run.

"The road to victory is not through Hollywood, Washington DC and New York," Emmons said. "It's through Paducah and Lexington and Louisville. We're Southerners and we expect you to come talk to us."

If she does run in 2014, Emmons said, the focus should be on bringing down McConnell.

"This is not a movie role, this is a job application," Emmons said. "The guy she might be running against needs to be held accountable. She must make senator McConnell the issue, not herself. That's my problem with her."

Some of Judd's past statements have been criticized as far left of Kentucky's conservative leanings.

She's said it is "unconscionable to breed" when there are hungry children in the world and has criticized western marriage traditions as patriarchal.

At George Washington University, Judd spoke about that "feller called Desmond Tutu."

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Judd spoke about "tombstones of little babies" who were her Kentucky "kin."

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Historically stingy on pardons. One-third forgive drug crimes.

Image by The Associated Press / AP

One-third of President Obama's clemency actions have been drug-related, a higher rate of drug-crime forgiveness than other recent presidents.

On Friday, the White House released information about Obama's first pardons in more than a year. With 17 new pardons for minor offenses, the president's total number of commutations and pardons is 40 — 13 of which forgave people who committed crimes related to cocaine or marijuana.

Obama has offered the lowest rate of clemency among modern presidents.

Two new pardons among the 17 released today include drug charges:

"Michael John Petri – Montrose, South Dakota.
Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute
and distribution of a controlled substance (cocaine).
Sentence: Five years imprisonment, three years supervised release."

"Lynn Marie Stanek – Tualatin, Oregon.
Offense: Unlawful use of a communication facility to
distribute cocaine.
Sentence: Six months in jail, five years probation conditioned on residence in a community treatment center for a period not to exceed one year."

Fifteen percent of his total number of pardons have involved marijuana charges, and 17.5 percent have involved cocaine.

George W. Bush pardoned, commuted, or rescinded convictions of 200 people, and only about 20 percent of those cases involved marijuana and cocaine.

Bill Clinton pardoned, commuted or rescinded convictions for 459 people, also with about 20 percent of those actions related to marijuana and cocaine.

With little chance of legislation in Washington, heads of state take the lead. “This is the field the game is going to be played on,” says Inslee.

Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin, left, leads fellow Democratic governors along the White House driveway after a meeting with President Barack Obama last week.

Image by Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

While most D.C. lawmakers show scant interest in pushing through new legislation on climate change, Democratic governors across the country are advancing a new argument on the way forward: reducing carbon emissions and investing in clean energy, they say, is a job for the states.

"I personally believe that with this obstructionist Congress," said Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin, "nothing much good is gonna happen in Washington despite the president's best efforts."

Climate change does have its champions in Washington — the president gave it top billing in his State of the Union address last month — but amidst already ongoing battles over gun control and immigration, and the looming threat of the 2014 midterm election, action from Congress in the next two years remains unlikely.

The states, Shumlin told BuzzFeed, have the opportunity and responsibility to take the lead until legislation at the federal level becomes more feasible.

Since Shumlin became governor two years ago, Vermont has doubled its solar energy, and the state became one of nine in the northeast and mid-Atlantic to partner in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a promise to cap power plant emissions at 91 million tons of carbon per year in 2014.

"The states do need to be the laboratories for energy policy, and Vermont is certainly a good example," Shumlin said.

The new governor of Washington, Jay Inslee, chose to dedicate a large section of his inaugural address two months ago to climate change, arguing that there was "no challenge greater" for his administration.

"One of the reasons I ran for governor," Inslee told BuzzFeed, "is I believe my state can help lead the nation and the world to a high-technology future that will be beneficial economically, and for our environment."

"The states are the place where we are going to make progress in the next year or two," he added. "This is the field the game is going to be played on, and we're going to move the ball."

In a state like Hawaii — with low-lying coastal islands already exposed to rising sea levels as a result of global warming — taking measures to curb global warming is a necessity, not a political choice, said Gov. Neil Abercrombie.

"I can't say what the Congress will do or not do, but we have to come to grips with these things," said Abercrombie. "We have to take this on. Climate change as a concept is one thing, but trying to deal with it on a state-by-state basis, particularly if you're in the middle of the Pacific as we are, involves finding local solutions."

Shumlin, also chair of the Democratic Governors Association, argued that investing in clean energy at the state level would "not only reduce our carbon footprint — it's gonna grow jobs," he said.

"Because we're harnessing the wind and the sun and our streams and bio mass, the result is, we have more green clean jobs per capita than any other state in America," Shumlin said. "So it's working."

Although Republicans in and outside Washington have maintained that acting on climate change this year would do damage to an economy still in recovery, Delaware Gov. Jack Markell said the creation of added clean energy jobs should be incentive enough for red states.

"State by state, different governors can make the determination of how much they want to do," said Markell, a Democrat. "The good thing, though, is that we're showing you can improve your economy while also taking care of your environment at the same time — that's a win-win, and it's something more governors of both parties will look to do."

But even in the face of Hurricane Sandy — the storm that pummeled up the East Coast last October, causing an estimated $50 billion in damage across the country — Republican governors are reluctant to credit climate change as an immediate challenge to their states.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, whose state was hit the hardest by Sandy, said last month that the environmental causes of the storm are beside the point.

"Maybe in the subsequent months and years, after I get done with rebuilding the state and getting people back in their homes," he said during a press conference, "I'll have the opportunity to ponder the esoteric question of the causes of the storm."

But Shumlin remembers the storm in 2011, Hurricane Irene, that in Vermont alone claimed seven lives and $733 million in damage, as a pressing call to action for his state. Climate change on a federal level, he said, is political, but in the states, it easily takes on a strong shade of the personal.

"I'm convinced that when I go and fight a storm like Irene," said Shumlin, "and I lose seven great Vermonters who die in a storm, and I see hundreds of Vermonters lose their homes, their businesses, every belonging they ever had, every photograph of their kids they ever had, and I'm out there giving them hugs and wishing I could restore their lives — but I know I can't — that's when climate change is staring me in the face."

Some of the Administration's talking points have fallen short.

The President Incorrectly Said Capitol Janitors Would Get A Pay Cut

At a press conference Friday, President Obama said "all the folks who are cleaning the floors at the Capitol -- now that Congress has left, somebody is going to be vacuuming and cleaning those floors and throwing out the garbage -- they're going to have less pay." He continued adding "the janitors, the security guards, they just got a pay cut, and they've got to figure out how to manage that. That's real."

But after the President spoke, Carlos Elias, the superintendent of the U.S. Capitol building and the Capitol Visitors Center, was forced to email his employees to tell them it was not true, according to CBS News.

"The pay and benefits of EACH of our employees WILL NOT be impacted," he wrote to Capitol staffers. "I request that you please notify all of our employees about the importance of ignoring media reports."

Image by Carolyn Kaster / AP

Education Secretary Arne Duncan Falsely Claimed Teachers Were Getting Pink Slips

During a February 24th appearance on Face the Nation Education Secretary Arne Duncan said that "there are literally teachers now who are getting pink slips, who are getting notices that they can’t come back this fall.”

The claim, however, was not backed up by evidence.

Duncan then said in a White House press briefing, "yes, there’s a district where it’s happened. But, again, it’s just because they have an earlier union notification than most, so Kanawha County, West Virginia. In that district, to be clear, it’s Title I teachers and Head Start teachers, so it’s these funding sources that are being cut.

But he added this "whether it’s all sequester-related, I don’t know, but these are teachers who are getting pink slips now.”

Kanawha schools superintendent Ron Duerring then sent a tweet suggesting Duncan was right, but the Washington Post spoke to him, and he confirmed that no teachers got pink slips.

We do not know what the cuts are,” he told the Post. “Then we will make that determination.”

Image by Jeff Haynes / Reuters

Cuts To A Department That Doesn't Exist

The Office of Management and Budget gave a detailed reporter of what agencies would be receiving cuts from the sequester. One of those was the National Drug Intelligence Center that would lose $2 million of its $20 million budget. But as a Reason report finds, the agency was absorbed by the DEA in September and no longer exists as its own entity.

Image by The Associated Press / AP

“I have allies in the [Intelligence] Committee,” Paul tells WABC.

Image by Gary Cameron / Reuters

WASHINGTON — Rand Paul promised to try to block John Brennan's confirmation as CIA director, either with a filibuster or by recruiting his friends on the Senate Intelligence Committee during an interview with WABC Radio's Aaron Klein that will air on Sunday night.

"I will do everything I can to stop him, and I told him I will filibuster it," Paul said. "Unfortunately I am not enough. You know, it takes 41. And we could not hold 41 together on the Hagel nomination. So my guess is I will not get 41."

Paul explained his strategy for blocking Brennan via the committee vote.

"My best chance, though, is that I have allies in the Committee," Paul said. "The Intelligence Committee is pretty powerful on these things. And the CIA realizes that, and the president has to deal with the intelligence committee. If the Intelligence Committee will continue to object and ask my question, Brennan will not come forward. They have the power to hold his nomination — and right now, see he was supposed to be approved by the committee last Thursday and they moved it to this Tuesday. So that means that I have a very good chance the White House will be forced to respond."

Paul is demanding answers to his questions about drone strikes within U.S. territory, and predicted that the White House would provide them on Monday.

"When John Brennan has been asked, he says that there are no geographical limitations to the use of drones strikes," Paul said. "And so the follow-up question is, obviously, does that mean even the U.S. border is not a geographical limitation?"

"We have laws in the United States that say the CIA is not to operate in the United States and we restrict our own military from operating in the United States … And so I am very, very concerned about this," Paul said. "I think I may get an answer. The rumor we are hearing back from the White House is on Monday we may get an answer. And the only answer that will satisfy me is, no, they wont break the law and that the drone strikes in the U.S. will break the law."

Paul voted for the confirmation of Chuck Hagel after voting to support a filibuster on him, and said last week that "the president gets to choose political appointees."

Ehud Barak's remarks get scattered applause.

Ehud Barak during a meeting at the Security Conference in Munich on February 3rd.

Image by Matthias Schrader / AP

WASHINGTON — Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, speaking at the AIPAC Policy Conference on Sunday, wished new Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel well.

"I wish Secretary Hagel all the best in his new role," Barak said. "As Secretary of Defense he will no doubt serve his country with the same pride and honor with which he served both on the battlefield and in Congress."

Barak's words were met with uncharacteristically lukewarm applause from an enthusiastic audience that responded warmly to the rest of his speech. Hagel's nomination was deeply unpopular among the pro-Israel community in America for his record on Iran and for past comments regarding the existence of a "Jewish lobby," which Hagel later apologized for.

Barak is set to be Hagel's first foreign visitor in the Pentagon on Tuesday.

AIPAC didn't take a side — but its donors do. “A very bad guy.”

AIPAC President Michael Kassen addresses the group Sunday.

Source: aipac.org

WASHINGTON — Donors to the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC gathered in Washington this weekend in the shadow of an appointment the group, for all its legendary clout, appeared powerless to stop.

Many of the supporters of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, as the group is formally known, expressed a kind of resigned frustration toward the confirmation of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense, but most avoided direct criticism of AIPAC's inaction during the drawn-out mudfight over the nomination.

"I think Chuck Hagel's a very bad guy. I don't like him. I think he's a mistake. I think he was a mistake for the Obama administration," said Rena Lewin, a 20-year AIPAC member and donor from Potomac, Maryland. "But for some reason or another AIPAC did not feel that was a fight they could win," she said.

AIPAC refused to publicly take a stand during the fight over Hagel's nomination. The move reflected the group's traditional neutrality on matters of personnel — as opposed to policy. But a new set of vocal, Republican-linked groups waged a bitter campaign against Hagel, leaving AIPAC in an awkward and vulnerable position. Indeed, the enforced silence was too much this time for some members. There were, people familiar with the situation say, a flurry of phone calls from donors to AIPAC's leadership over the past few weeks demanding that the organization do something to stop the former Nebraska senator, who had once suggested the "Jewish lobby" exerted a malign influence on American policy.

At this year's Policy Conference, where AIPAC's rank and file congregates once a year, donors and attendees wandering in and out of the Congressional Club lounge for donors filled with pool tables and massage chairs were publicly guarded about the organization's position regarding Hagel — though it was hard to find one who didn't intensely dislike him.

"I was very disappointed with the Hagel appointment," said David Feder, a donor from Roseland, New Jersey. "It passed, and he's our next secretary of defense, but I think he's the wrong person for the job."

But Feder, like many others, swallowed his feelings about Hagel.

"I don't think AIPAC getting involved would have done anything," Feder said. "That's not AIPAC's role. We can't go against who the president wants to appoint. We did the right thing by not getting involved."

Michael Lerner, a donor from Overland Park, Kansas, who has been an AIPAC member for decades, shook his head when asked if the group could have done more.

"It's not AIPAC's business," he said. "Our business is to work with Congress on legislation. The president's entitled to appoint whoever he wants."

"We could only lose," Lerner said. "It's not what we do."

"Hagel was going to be approved, but even if he wasn't, we wouldn't want to get involved in presidential appointments and things like that," Lerner said, though he said there was more pressure this time for AIPAC to act than there had been in the past.

"That's a very tricky question, because one of the foundations of AIPAC is that we're a bipartisan organization," said Bill Emerson, a donor from West Palm Beach. "So at certain points you suspend your personal choices and options and so on."

"Was everybody in AIPAC happy about the Hagel nomination? No," said Bill Emerson, a donor from West Palm Beach. "Did AIPAC feel like it was a useful thing to put a stake in the sand or whatever kind of metaphor you want to use and push hard against his nomination? No."

"But we have to maintain bipartisanship," Emerson said. "We're a bipartisan organization."

"In some cases, people characterize AIPAC as this conservative, right-wing kind of thing, and there are elements of AIPAC that are like that," Emerson continued, "but in most cases we have to focus on working with Congress on both sides of the aisle."

The diversity of political opinion inside the group did not, in fact, appear to extend to the Hagel question.

"I think it's important that people be aware of the Chuck Hagel issue," said Marcy Stahm, a member from Beachwood, Ohio, adding that was "just me speaking." "But I'm not sure it's AIPAC's place to get involved and take a stand."

"AIPAC represents all Americans — Republicans, Democrats," she said. "It's not about political weaponry."

Philip Klein wrote in January that AIPAC's public neutrality, which has clearly been driven home among its members, matched its private actions: "There is zero activity on the Hill from AIPAC," he quoted a Senate aide as saying. The action on Capitol Hill came from operatives in a few Senate offices as well as partisan groups like the Emergency Committee for Israel, while AIPAC sat it out.

Hagel went largely unmentioned through the conference's official proceedings, but Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak made an exception in his speech to the conference on Sunday night. Barak praised Hagel, saying, "I wish Secretary Hagel all the best in his new role. As Secretary of Defense he will no doubt serve his country with the same pride and honor with which he served both on the battlefield and in Congress."

The remark drew only scattered clapping from an audience that had been giving a standing ovation every few minutes during Sunday evening's session. They may have to accept Hagel — but they won't pretend to like him.

Shashank Tripathi, who goes by the Twitter alias @ComfortablySmug, started tweeting again on March 3rd.

Tripathi's tweets during Hurricane Sandy

Hurricane Sandy's most notorious villain is tweeting again.

Shashnk Tripathi, the man who deliberately spread misinformation during Hurricane Sandy, started tweeting again from his Twitter account, @comfortablysmug on March 3rd.

While Hurricane Sandy ravaged New York City, Tripathi was the source of tons of scary, but ultimately false information about the storm's effects on New York City. His fake news spread wildly on Twitter because many of his followers were members of the media.

He reported, falsely, on a total blackout in Manhattan, on a flood on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and on other things that didn't happen. Some of his tweets even made it to television, with his Stock Exchange tweet being reported on The Weather Channel and CNN.

Ultimately, Con Ed, the MTA, and Stock Exchange sources had to take time during the crisis situation to refute these claims.

Shashank Tripathi, while anonymous on Twitter, was the campaign manager for Christopher R. Wight, a Republican candidate for the U.S. House from New York's 12th Congressional District.

Tripathi resigned after his tweets came to light in a report by BuzzFeed saying in a statement at the time "I wish to offer the people of New York a sincere, humble and unconditional apology."

Tripathi's Tweets

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