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The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama

[Not single-page] The origins and consequences of the Obama administration’s focus on drone strikes to kill enemy combatants: “Of course, the danger of the Lethal Presidency is that the precedent you establish is hardly ever the precedent you think you are establishing, and whenever you seem to be describing a program that is limited and […]

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We’re Getting Wildly Differing Assessments

A minute-by-minute account of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the American Care Act, and how some news organizations got it initially wrong: “Into his conference call, the CNN producer says (correctly) that the Court has held that the individual mandate cannot be sustained under the Commerce Clause, and (incorrectly) that it therefore ‘looks like’ the […]

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Team of Mascots

Obama famously said he wanted a “team of rivals” in his Cabinet. Why that never happened: “The way Cabinet officers relate personally to the president is—no surprise—often the crucial factor in their success or failure. Colin Powell had a worldwide profile and a higher approval rating than George W. Bush, and partly for those very […]

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Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will

A look at the Obama Administration’s process for approving drone strikes on Al Qaeda suspects. Insiders say President Obama is personally approving the final decisions: “President Obama, overseeing the regular Tuesday counterterrorism meeting of two dozen security officials in the White House Situation Room, took a moment to study the faces. It was Jan. 19, […]

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Young Barack Obama in Love

Excerpt from Maraniss’s new biography of the president. A look at Obama’s early twenties in New York, from the perspective of his girlfriend at the time: “Genevieve was out of her mother’s Upper East Side apartment by then. Earlier that spring she had moved and was sharing the top floor of a brownstone at 640 […]

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The Rise of the Killer Drones: How America Goes to War in Secret

How the U.S. drone program became central to the Obama administration’s counterterrorism efforts. The president has presided over 268 covert drone strikes, five times what George W. Bush ordered: “But the implications of drones go far beyond a single combat unit or civilian agency. On a broader scale, the remote-control nature of unmanned missions enables […]

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The Rage Machine

A 2010 profile on the big media dreams of Andrew Breitbart, who died early Thursday morning at age 43: “Breitbart, who is Jewish, grew up in Brentwood, an affluent part of Los Angeles. He seems a familiar bicoastal type until he starts explaining his conviction that President Barack Obama’s election was the culmination of a […]

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