'Enchanted'? Twitterverse Pounces

One-time cheerleaders' support is 'wobbly'

(NEWSER) - During the campaign, lefty pundits offered Barack Obama some of “the most favorable coverage that any White House contender has drawn in a generation.” Now, those same commentators’ support for the president is looking “wobbly,” writes Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post. “I find myself saying, 'Where's that well-oiled Obama machine we saw last year?'” says Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page. “Maybe he's being a little too cool at this point.” More»

Phrase now has own Web site, Twitter handle

(NEWSER) - Around this time every year, “everybody in Washington gets all wee-weed up,” President Obama said yesterday—and immediately, the media was aflutter, Politico reports. “WTF does wee-weed up mean and how do you spell it?” wondered a reporter for the Hill. Soon after, the jokes started rolling in: “Is this some Chicago phrase I don’t know about?” blogged Michelle Malkin. More»

(NEWSER) - Say what you want about President Nixon, but at least his press conferences were entertaining. “It was the Colosseum, and everybody’s thumb was down,” recalls staffer Pat Buchanan. “It was something worth watching.” The same can’t be said of President Obama’s all-too-frequent appearances. Last week’s health-care presser was “arguably the most listless televised hour” he’s delivered yet, writes Felix Gillette in the New York Observer. Obama’s become “nearly unwatchable.” More»

Pundits offer wide-ranging report card

(NEWSER) - On President Obama’s 100th day in office, Mark Halperin of Time provides a White House report card:

• Barack Obama: A-. “Instantly comfortable and highly skilled at the hardest job in the world.”
• Joe Biden: A-: Operates "precisely in the manner he and Obama discussed before he accepted the position."
• Hillary Clinton: A-. “A significant, powerful, worldly, respected figure.”
• Tim Geithner: C-. “Still lacks constituency support where it counts.”
• Michelle Obama: A+. “Aced the traditional role of First Lady while simultaneously modernizing the office.”

Move represents major policy switch

(NEWSER) - Twitter has apparently decided corporate relations are more important than content. Company officials have announced that they will voluntarily restrict Twitter content in specific countries to comply with government limits on what citizens are allowed to read. "As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression," Twitter wrote in a blog post yesterday . "Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country while keeping it available in the rest of the world." More»