Think you pay too much for cell phone service? President Obama’s reelection campaign spent $143,862 last year just on text messages. Obama’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee — even without a Republican nominee in place yet — spent twice as much money as all the GOP candidates combined in 2011. It is all part of the president’s expanding effort to mobilize supporters and start building the massive infrastructure for a successful reelection campaign. Read full article > >

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Obama cranks up the campaign spending

In both style and substance, Sherry Rehman was born to be a Washington diplomat and hostess. She has a designer wardrobe, a chestnut coif and camera-ready makeup. She also has a BA from Smith, a CV full of democratic credentials and the articulate self-confidence of her country’s Westernized elite. Read full article > >

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Pakistan’s new envoy brings liberal charm but faces slim chance for diplomatic thaw

Before unleashing Democratic super PACs.

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Obama Feared Koch Onslaught

Former senator Bob Kerrey told The Fix on Tuesday that he will not run for the open Senate seat in Nebraska, a move that robs Democrats of their top potential recruit in a tough state. Democrats eyed a potential Senate comeback for Kerrey after Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) announced in late December that he wouldn’t seek reelection . Read full article > >

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Bob Kerrey won’t seek Nebraska Senate seat

RICHMOND — The Republican revolution is on in Richmond. Virginia Republicans have aggressively pursued a conservative agenda since taking over all of state government, steamrolling Democrats along the way. Read full article > >

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Republicans in Virginia push conservative agenda, with bills on guns, gays

Leading Republican groups raised more than four times as much money as their Democratic counterparts, according to campaign filings.

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Campaign Finance Reports Show ‘Super PAC’ Donors

Federal agents based in Phoenix were responsible for the controversial tactics used in the flawed gun operation known as “Fast and Furious,” rather than Justice Department officials, according to a report released today by Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Read full article > >

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House Democrats say Phoenix ATF to blame in ‘Fast & Furious’ fiasco

Ms. Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, announced she would leave her House seat to focus on her recovery from a shooting attack last year.

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The Caucus: Gabrielle Giffords Says She Will Resign From Congress

President Obama will promise a populist “blueprint for an American economy that’s built to last,” as he seeks to draw a contrast between the Democrats and Republicans in his State of the Union address.

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Obama to Draw an Economic Line in State of Union

In late 2010, on the eve of the Arab Spring uprisings, a Tunisian blogger asked Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah what democratic nations should do to help cyber­activists in the Middle East. Abdel Fattah, who had spent time in jail under Hosni Mubarak’s regime, argued that if Western democracies wanted to support the region’s Internet activists, they should put their own houses in order. He called on the world’s democracies to “fight the troubling trends emerging in your own backyards” that “give our own regimes great excuses for their own actions.” Read full article > >

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Why doesn’t Washington understand the Internet?

Updated at 3:21 p.m. Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) will not seek reelection this year. Hinchey will make the announcement official on Thursday at 1 p.m. eastern time, when he will speak at an historic sight in Kingston, N.Y., according to a release from his office. Read full article > >

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Democratic Rep. Maurice Hinchey to retire

In a suburban Virginia living room, Earline Coe, solid Democrat and Obama loyalist, dials again. “Hello, may I speak with Ellen?” she says, tapping a pen on a long list of names. It is supposed to be a good list, one generated by the Obama campaign’s data wonks in Chicago, who have sorted their files of millions of voters and identified these as likely recruits in a renewed version of the vaunted grass-roots operation that propelled Obama’s 2008 victory. Read full article > >

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Obama’s backers put out calls for support

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Former senator and Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum is trying to get New Hampshire conservatives to fall in love with him. But in so doing, he’s reminding some independents, and certainly Democrats, exactly why they fell out of love with him in his home state of Pennsylvania, where he was ousted from office by more than 17 points in 2006. Read full article > >

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New Hampshire voters hammer Santorum over his views

Most Democratic lawmakers stayed away from the State House floor in a continuing battle over union representation at private businesses in the state.

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‘Right to Work’ Republicans Deprived of a Quorum in Indiana

Demonstrators crowded the Hungarian capital of Budapest Monday night to protest a new constitution they declared “anti-democratic.” Many demanded Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s resignation. Protesters gathered outside the State Opera, where the prime minister was attending a gala celebrating the new constitution, the Associated Press reported . The protesters, upset by a number of new changes in the constitution, chanted “Viktator,” merging the prime minister’s first name with “dictator,” the AP said. Read full article > >

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Hungary loses ‘Republic’ in name, and protests fill capital