Today I was down by the White House to witness the massive protest against the new Keystone XL pipeline that would bring tar sands oil from Canada down to American refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. Thousands showed up to cover the multiple city blocks it takes to fully circle the White House. The protesters [...]

I’ll be at the 3pm demonstration at the White House today with Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben and others, and I hope to be livestreaming the event. Cross your fingers they’re not vindictively arrested by the Park Police on behalf of a thin-skinned government.

The Obama administration has a strange habit of inappropriately blaming the unpopularity of their actions on the fact that a few progressive writers didn’t do enough to sell the public on the good aspects of their deal. It would seem the White House is basically taking the perspective of a Scooby Doo villain in concluding [...]

If so many people are saying you got beaten that you actually feel the need to start publicly declaring you didn’t cave, that means you caved. From the White House’s absurd attempt to defend the debt ceiling deal with lies: Myth: President Obama caved. Fact: President Obama laid out key priorities that had to be [...]

VIDEO: Eighty year-old Daniel Ellsberg was arrested on Saturday in front of the White House when he refused to leave at the request of police. He was one of 113 people who were arrested, handcuffed and taken to the police station on March 19, 2011 for protesting President Obama’s continued torture of Bradley Manning.

Toby Harnden at the Telegraph says John King says that Gibbs got the boot because Daley didn’t want him around. I think I was one of the first to report on the pending White House shake-up back on December 9 on MSNBC, and again on FDL on December 20. But you didn’t have to be exceptionally wired in to see that the President had lost confidence in Gibbs.

In the waning days of the debate over health care legislation, the White House’s political team did a fairly good job of convincing Democrats in Congress, Washington reporters, and like-minded writers that the act would somehow get a lot more popular after it was actually signed into law. The latest CNN poll (PDF) shows that [...]

Spiro Agnew — sorry, Robert Gibbs — says “the professional left is not representative of the progressives who organized, campaigned, raised money and ultimately voted for Obama.” Well, the Obama in the White House is not representative of the Obama who organized, campaigned, raised money and ran for office, so I guess it’s a wash. [...]

The President is hosting a signing ceremony for his Executive Order on abortion today. Greg Sargent wrote a fascinating post about the incredible lengths the White House went to in order to woo the anti-abortion Democrats to support the health care bill, with endless personal entreaties, meetings and accommodations. The pro-choice Democrats, on the other [...]

The brand name prescription drug lobby PhRMA has been holding back on further support for health care reform until they are sure the final reconciliation package is still to the liking of the drug industry. The announcement that PhRMA plans to drop $6 million in a final round of pro-reform ads is a good indication [...]