The Real Deal on 10 Lies About Obama

(NEWSER) - With the Obama administration stepping up its push for health-care reform, Mark Halperin, in Time, lists five reasons why it will, and won't, get done. The pros:

• The industry is "still on board."
• "Barack Obama doesn't fail too often."
• It's a must-win for the entire White House agenda.
• Congressional Democrats are "remarkably united" on the issue.
• There's enough big-name Republicans who want a deal.

Greene County Republican Committee editor writes controversial column

(NEWSER) - If President Obama wins re-election, Virginia’s Greene County Republican Committee—or at least one of its members—expects an “armed revolution.” The group’s March newsletter included a column from the editor, Ponch McPhee, in which he writes that Obama is an "ideologue unlike anything world history has ever witnessed or recognized," and Republicans will have no choice “but armed revolution should we fail with the power of the vote in November." More»

...because he's not terribly interested in fighting it

(NEWSER) - Democrats saw the way Mitt Romney's super PAC destroyed Newt Gingrich in Iowa, and it terrified them, because President Obama's super PAC—or as Politico terms it, "not-so-super PAC"—doesn't have the muscle for anything like that. "It's like when China got the bomb," says one Democrat close to the PAC, "We thought we were the ones with cash supremacy. That's clearly not the case." Obama's Priorities USA Action has just $5 million in the bank, less than half Romney's $12 million. More»

President needs trash-talking surrogates ahead of election 2012: Michael Scherer

(NEWSER) - Amid press conferences and big speeches, President Obama spent his first two years in office as “his own messenger.” But expect that to change in the run-up to the next election, writes Michael Scherer in Time . In those first two years, Obama lacked a solid team of spokespeople; aides like Larry Summers and Rahm Emanuel weren’t up to the job. Now, “as the Obama team enters the most trying 14 months of a remarkably trying five-year blitz, they are getting their ducks in a row.” More»

Case questions birth country of Jerusalem-born American

(NEWSER) - The Supreme Court is about to take on a case that tangles Israeli politics with questions of congressional and executive power. It will hear an appeal from the parents of an American born in Jerusalem—a city the US doesn’t recognize as belonging to Israel—who wants Israel listed as his birthplace on his US passport instead of "Jerusalem," as is currently the policy. State department officials have denied the request of Menachem Zivotofsky’s US-born parents, who moved to Israel in 2000; both the district court and an appeals court ruled that it had no authority to consider the claim. More»