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| TOP STORIES |
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| Europe stagnation, Japan recession fuel fears of slump |
| Europe’s economic sluggishness and political paralysis and Japan’s slide back into recession have raised the risks of a prolonged global slump, economists say. |
| Hong Kong officials clear barricades from road near main protest site |
| Authorities obtained a court order and workers began removing barricades at one downtown site. |
| On immigration, Obama could enter murky, uncharted territory |
| Those who believe he is going too far also warn that it is a dangerous precedent for future executives. |
| Protests over Mexican students spawn rage at government |
| Outrage over the fate of 43 students has grown into fury against corrupt politicians and their druf-trafficking cronies. |
| The Fix: The ridiculousness of Hillary Clinton’s expand-the-map strategy in 2016 |
| Could she really make Arkansas, Indiana, Missouri, Arizona and Georgia competitive? |
| Pope: Children have right to grow up in a family with a father and a mother |
| Was he emphasizing the primacy of traditional families or simply trying to support them? Experts debate. |
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| POLITICS |
| Obama’s flip-flop on using executive action on illegal immigration |
“Well, actually, my position hasn’t changed.” —President Obama, news conference at conclusion of G20 summit, Brisbane, Australia, Nov. 16, 2014 Politicians generally hate to say they have changed their minds about something. With President Obama poised to take executive action to address immigration, perhaps as early as this week, he was challenged by a reporter to explain why he believed he could take this action now, after years of saying his hands were tied. The president responded with a Pinocchio-laden straw man, saying that the questions had a distinct focus: “their interest was in me, through executive action, duplicating the legislation that was stalled in Congress.” Read full article >> |
| Executive actions: An increasingly common way for Congress to hate presidents |
The plot is always the same. The president sends Congress his list of legislative priorities. The divided Congress receiving the list laughs when they open it, and then throws the document in the shredder. Nothing gets done. Read full article >> |
| Outgoing DCCC Chair Steve Israel: ‘We fundamentally made the right decisions’ |
To get the obvious out of the way: This likely isn't how Steve Israel wanted to close things out. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair is stepping down this week as his party's House caucus finds itself with its smallest minority in almost a century, and Republicans celebrate an incoming majority that leaves most of President Obama’s agenda during his final two years in office dead on arrival. Read full article >> |
| OPINIONS |
| Purity politics, Democrat-style |
| Here comes the tea party of the left. On a rainy Monday morning, 50 sodden liberal activists stood on the muddy front lawn of the Capitol Hill home of Sen. Mary Landrieu, advocating for the Louisiana Democrat’s defeat. Read full article >> |
| Michael Gerson: Pope Francis challenges the faithful |
| Pope Francis’s American honeymoon is over (though the whole idea of a papal honeymoon smacks of Borgia-era excess). At first, some political conservatives complained that Francis was showing insufficient respect for distinguished Catholic theologians such as Adam Smith and Milton Friedman. But now, more thoughtful Catholic writers wonder if the pope (who conspicuously marries cohabiting couples) is laying the groundwork for more substantive changes on the sacrament of marriage and access to the Eucharist for the divorced and remarried. This, argues Ross Douthat of the New York Times, would “sow confusion among the church’s orthodox adherents” and raise the (undesired) prospect of “schism.” Read full article >> |
| Obamacare’s biggest obstacle now may be its public image |
| Another year, another HealthCare.gov enrollment period and another series of Republican efforts to repeal, defund or otherwise dismantle the Affordable Care Act. So when will the GOP learn to stop worrying and love Obamacare? Read full article >> |
| LOCAL |
| Virginia woman accused of attempting to aid Islamic State |
| Federal authorities have arrested and charged a Henrico County, Va., woman who they say wrote Facebook posts supportive of the Islamic State and offered to help someone connect with the terrorist group in Syria, court documents show. Read full article >> |
| D.C. area forecast: Unseasonably cold today with a punishing wind; still cold through Friday |
| WEATHER GANG | Today will be 20 degrees colder than normal, with temps hoverings around freezing. |
| National Children’s Museum leaving Prince George’s to return to D.C. |
| The National Children’s Museum is moving back to the District next year, just two years after its move to Prince George’s County, officials said Monday. Ross Hechinger, chair of the museum’s board of directors, said the institution is seeking a home near a Metro station and space to expand its exhibits and programs and grow its visitor base. Read full article >> |
| SPORTS |
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| Jay Gruden troubled by ongoing ‘fundamental flaws’ displayed by Robert Griffin III |
Jay Gruden hoped to see Robert Griffin III show signs of progress on Sunday as he made his second straight start since returning from his six-week injury-induced absence. But instead, despite facing the 29th-ranked defense in the league, Griffin struggled mightily and seemed to regress. Read full article >> |
| Capitals forward Chris Brown’s whirlwind life on NHL fringe takes him back to Arizona |
| GLENDALE, Ariz. — Over the past three days, Washington Capitals forward Chris Brown had rushed to the airport in snowy Syracuse, N.Y., arrived at Verizon Center less than two hours before his scheduled return to the NHL, scrambled to find clothes for a road trip that began later that night, gotten scratched in St. Louis and now, amid the far more manageable temperatures of the city he once called home, considered the unique life of a 23-year-old living on the fringes. Read full article >> |
| FEDERAL GOVERNMENT |
| Obama poised to keep a promise, and a constituency |
| In June, President Obama, occasionally dubbed the “deporter-in-chief,” promised Latino leaders he would use his executive powers and issue an order to protect some illegal immigrants from deportation. Then, in September, reportedly buying into the interesting notion that a delay would help embattled Democratic Senate candidates in the South, Obama said he would put off any action on immigration until after the election. Three Dems lost anyway, and one more is likely to do so. Read full article >> |
| Homeland Security earns clean audit two years running |
| For the second straight year, the Department of Homeland Security has achieved a much sought-after clean audit of its financial statements by an independent auditor, department officials said Monday. The audit, by the firm of KPMG, found that DHS’s financial statements were in order, with the auditors certifying that they had “reasonable assurance that what they saw on those documents is correct,’’ Chip Fulghum, DHS’s chief financial officer and acting undersecretary of management said in an interview. Read full article >> |
| Hagel announces strategy of innovation to thwart risks to U.S. military superiority |
| SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — Wary of a more muscular Russia and China, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Saturday the Pentagon will make a new push for fresh thinking about how the United States can keep and extend its military superiority despite tighter budgets and the wear and tear of 13 years of war. Read full article >> |
| WORLD |
| U.S. commander weighs decisions that will shape Afghan war’s final chapter |
| The United States is planning to base about 1,000 security personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul after the formal end of the military mission in Afghanistan and may retain the ability to use attack planes to support local forces until then, according to the top American commander in the country. Read full article >> |
| Chart: The top buyers and sellers in the global arms race |
| The APEC Summit in Beijing last week and the G20 meetings held in Brisbane, Australia, were both reminders of how the center of gravity in world affairs is fundamentally shifting to Asia. But you don't need to look only at geopolitical powwows to find proof of that. Consider global arms sales, instead. Read full article >> |
| Taps run dry in São Paulo drought, but water company barely shrugs |
| ATIBAIA, Brazil — Seen from a micro-light aircraft, flying low near this small town in Brazil’s interior, the scale of the water crisis blighting São Paulo, a megalopolis 40 miles away, was frighteningly clear. The five reservoirs in an interlinked system that supplies 6.5 million people, more than a third of its metropolitan population, were vividly depleted. Caked red banks of exposed earth showed just how low the water level had fallen. Read full article >> |
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| BUSINESS |
| The major cities where homeownership is the most — and least — affordable |
The hurdles to homeownership are many. On top of saving for the down payment, some people are too busy stressing about other debt to want to take on a mortgage. Others are better off stashing the money away for retirement. Read full article >> |
| Federal insurance fund for millions of pensions is deteriorating, report says |
| The federal insurance fund that protects the pensions of more than 10 million Americans is fast deteriorating, a government report said Monday, increasing pressure on Congress to come up with a plan to shore it up before employers abandon it altogether. Read full article >> |
| Another austerity victim: Japan falls back into recession |
For the fourth time since 2008, Japan is back in a technical recession. Its economy unexpectedly shrank for the second quarter in a row, this time falling 1.6 percent as its big sales tax hike continued to slam growth. Read full article >> |
| TECHNOLOGY |
| Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker voices support for net neutrality principles |
Before a room full of start-up entrepreneurs in Washington, D.C., on Monday morning, Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker was asked about her department's role in the ongoing debate over net neutrality, or the idea that all online content should be treated the same by Internet service providers. Read full article >> |
| The FCC wants to give educators an extra $1.5 billion a year for Internet |
The federal government wants to add $1.5 billion every year to a crucial pool of money that educators rely on to purchase and provide high-speed Internet — a huge shot in the arm for a fund that, for more than a decade, wasn't growing along with inflation. Read full article >> |
| Why the South lags behind when it comes to home broadband use |
| The Obama administration has made a major push to expand broadband access to the poorest and most rural parts of the country, and they have largely succeeded. A recent Federal Communications Commission report noted that nearly all U.S. households were in an area with at least one high-speed broadband provider. Read full article >> |
| LIFESTYLE |
| One Direction made it to ‘Four,’ which is more of a feat than ‘Four’ itself |
| One Direction’s new album, “Four,” is the best fourth album in the short but exhaustively documented modern history of boy bands. This isn’t necessarily saying much, because no boy band has ever made a great fourth album. Many don’t even get to four; ’N Sync never did. For others, No. 4 is the post-reunion album, the one you make when you’re broke and old, to justify the reunion tour. Read full article >> |
| Katherine Heigl returns to TV, an unusually forgiving place |
By now, you’ve probably heard that Katherine Heigl has a reputation of being difficult. The stories started in 2007 when the actress criticized her star vehicle “Knocked Up” for being sexist. Rumors continued the following summer after she withdrew her name from consideration from the Emmy race because she didn’t think the material for her character on “Grey’s Anatomy” was good enough. And so on. Read full article >> |
| ‘Last Man Standing’ still has a lot to say about Obamacare |
It can be tough for a sitcom to take on a timely topic, particularly in the political arena. That’s partly a factor of TV production schedules, partly the hesitance about shoehorning a serious issue in between laugh tracks. But on Friday night, ABC’s “Last Man Standing” managed to jump into current events — specifically, the Obamacare debate. Read full article >> |
