Kamala D. Harris took a hard line in negotiations with banks, but faced increasing pressure from the White House to reach a deal.

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How Kamala Harris Finessed a Foreclosure Deal for California

Gene Sperling’s sports metaphors collided so often during the White House budget rollout that it’s a wonder the man didn’t pull a hamstring. The head of President Obama’s National Economic Council suited up for a Monday afternoon news conference with a full lineup of athletic cliches. “We believe manufacturing punches above its weight economically,” he said, and the administration’s trade policy “will level the playing field against countries around the world.” Read full article > >

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Obama’s budget games

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said a modification offered by the White House did not go far enough in protecting religious liberty.

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Bishops Criticize Proposal on Birth Control Coverage

A White House consultant’s report said Friday that the Energy Department should bolster its ability to assess loan guarantee risks in the wake of the Solyndra bankruptcy, and urged the department to “aggressively strengthen its position” before more borrowers turn to the government for relief. Read full article > >

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Consultant suggests changes to Energy Department’s loan reviews in the wake of Solyndra

The parallels between Mitt Romney and his father, George — both businessmen, both Republican governors of blue states, both presidential candidates — make for tantalizing psychological comparisons. ¶ Is the younger Romney less concerned about economic fairness than was his late father, who helped create Michigan’s first income tax and famously returned a big bonus when he was chief executive of American Motors? Does Mitt’s cautious style reflect the bitter experience of George, whose 1968 presidential run collapsed after he used the term “brainwashing” to explain his early support for the Vietnam War? ¶ Such speculation can certainly be entertaining for political junkies hoping to glimpse the soul of a would-be president. However, the contrast between father and son reveals less about Mitt Romney’s state of mind than it does about America’s. If Mitt has a tin ear for the concerns of the needy, if he goes along with, rather than resists, the rightward turn of his party , he is simply mirroring the disturbing transformations of American business and politics in recent decades. In his public and private careers, the younger Romney has emulated the retreat of corporate elites and the Republican Party from the model of economic partnership and cross-party compromise that the elder Romney exemplified. ¶ At a moment when America needs both business innovation and effective oversight, vigorous growth as well as economic fairness , we would be better off with George, rather than Mitt, in the White House. Read full article > >

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Romney is the right man for America. George Romney, that is.

Another shocking story from former White House intern Mimi Alford ’s memoir about her affair with President Kennedy : He once asked her to do, well, something naughty with his brother Ted . “Mimi, why don’t you take care of my baby brother,” she recalls him asking when she met the men in a Boston hotel suite in October 1963. “He could stand a little relaxation.” Read full article > >

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JFK mistress Mimi Alford: Secret trips, Ted Kennedy, Cuban Missile Crisis — and why she did it

Seeking to stoke a political vulnerability for President Obama, Republican lawmakers moved Wednesday to amp up pressure on the White House over a controversial new health-care rule that critics say violates religious liberty — vowing to press for legislation to repeal the provision unless the administration relents. Read full article > >

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Boehner vows action to overturn Obama administration rule on birth control

More than you wanted to know? A new book shares explicit details about a 50-year-old presidential sex scandal between JFK and a White House intern. “Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath,” by Mimi Beardsley Alford , chronicles the 18-month relationship that ended when Kennedy died in 1963. The memoir is getting a lot of advance buzz — including a prime-time NBC interview Wednesday with Meredith Vieira — because of Alford’s credibility and her graphic descriptions of encounters with the dazzling Womanizer-in-Chief, whom she always called “Mr. President” and never kissed on the lips. Read full article > >

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JFK intern Mimi Alford shares story of her affair with Kennedy in new book. Relevant? Historian Robert Dallek says yes

A Republican fund-raising advantage among outside groups has led the White House to change course and use surrogates to encourage donations to a “super PAC.”

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With a Signal to Donors, Obama Yields on ‘Super PACs’

President Obama will use the backdrop of a White House science fair Tuesday to highlight a nationwide shortage of math and science teachers and unveil a plan to invest $100 million to help train 100,000 new educators over the next decade. Read full article > >

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Obama to announce $100 million plan to train new educators

The author of a new tell-all book claims she lost her virginity to President John F. Kennedy when she was a 19-year-old White House intern, and that the affair lasted 18 months.

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Former intern details affair with JFK

President Barack Obama tells a US network that he deserves a second term in the White House, as a poll puts his approval rating above 50%.

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Obama: ‘I deserve a second term’

Just before 1:30 p.m. Aug. 3, a frustrated President Obama gathered Gene B. Sperling and the economic team in the White House and told them to design a jobs package he could offer the American public. Obama had spent much of the year locked in negotiations with Republicans over the national debt, with little to show for the effort but a sagging approval rating. He had wanted to argue publicly for ideas to create jobs, but hesitated in the midst of negotiations. Liberal critics reprised a familiar critique of the Obama White House: that it too often bows to political constraints and forfeits what’s right for what’s possible or easy. Read full article > >

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Gene B. Sperling: Obama’s jobs creator

President Obama will announce details Friday for a $1 billion Veterans Job Corps that the White House says will put up to 20,000 veterans to work over the next five years on projects to preserve and restore national parks and other federal, state and local lands. Read full article > >

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Obama to announce Veterans Job Corps

From the investigations of the Clinton White House to the more than 1,000 subpoenas he issued almost single-handedly, Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) cut an investigative path along Pennsylvania Avenue unlike that of almost any other committee chairman of the past 50 years. Read full article > >

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Rep. Dan Burton, who transformed House panel into a feared committee, to retire