All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

CBS News' Katie Couric used part of her exclusive interview with President Barack Obama today to ask him about a David Brooks column in today's New York Times. Brooks argues that the president has over-interpreted his mandate and is letting Nancy Pelosi lead the Democrats on a "suicide march."

Mr. Obama's response – besides a bit of a ribbing of Couric for excerpting so much of the Brooks column in her question – was that he's not too worried about what Brooks thinks.

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With the unemployment rate at 9.4 percent, the highest level since 1983, Americans are expressing increasingly pessimistic views about the national economy, a new CBS News/New York Times poll finds.

More than eight in ten Americans now describe the economy in negative terms. Forty-eight percent characterize it as "fairly bad," while another 36 percent call it "very bad."

Just 14 percent say the economy is "fairly good," and a mere one percent describe it as "very good."

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The government mistakenly published a detailed list of the nation's civilian nuclear sites online, sparking an flurry of debate on how dangerous the breach really was before it was reported and called into question by the New York Times.

The 266-page report was marked "highly confidential," and listed the many sites across the country which comprise the civilian nuclear power network — and some weapons testing locations — but not, according to the Times, any sensitive information on military programs or the security systems in place to protect the nuclear sites.

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A majority of Americans would pay higher taxes if it meant health insurance for everyone, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll – though many worry that the nation’s economy will suffer if the government were to offer universal health care.

The poll also finds that health care is a major domestic concern for Americans, second only to the economy.

Fifty-seven percent of those polled say they are willing to pay higher taxes in order to provide all Americans with health care coverage. While seventy three percent of Democrats favor a tax increase to fund coverage, only twenty-nine percent of Republicans back such a move.

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Asked which domestic policy area the president and the Congress should focus on other than the economy, thirty-five percent said health care, the top choice. The second most popular choice was education at twenty-two percent, followed by social security at seventeen percent and energy at fifteen percent.

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"I don't think there is any chance of a second stimulus package at the end of this administration in the days that we have remaining," White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto told reporters this morning, reports CBS News' Mark Knoller. Fratto acknowledged the need for an economic push but said responsibility lies with the incoming Obama administration.

"Our concern with the article yesterday was that it had a narrow focus and that was to simply blame the housing crisis and the resulting financial crisis on this administration's push for home ownership," Fratto also said of the New York Times' story Sunday which linked Bush policies to the housing crisis. He added "that is about as myopic as you can get and as unsophisticated as you can get."

The White House did not parse words in a reaction to the story released yesterday by press secretary Dana Perino, which read, "today's front-page New York Times story relies on hindsight with blinders on and one eye closed. The Times' 'reporting' in this story amounted to finding selected quotes to support a story the reporters fully intended to write from the onset, while disregarding anything that didn't fit their point of view."

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