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....During an address to the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics Sunday in San Diego, someone in the 3,000 person crowd began to goad her using a bullhorn.

President Barack Obama saluted a pair of United States Marines on Tuesday while holding what appeared to be a styrofoam cup in his saluting hand, a breach of military regulations that won't win him fans among veterans and servicemen.

US Middle East peace envoy Martin Indyk has resigned following the collapse of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. A US official who spoke on condition of anonymity did not provide a reason for Indyk's departure, which had been widely expected after the two sides failed to meet their goal of reaching a comprehensive peace agreement this spring. Indyk will return to the Washington-based Brookings Institution think tank, the official said. US Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed on Friday that Indyk was leaving his post as top US envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Kerry praised Indyk and thanked him for his...

As fresh word arrives of Islamic militants continuing their full-speed assault on Baghdad and executing thousands along the way, President Obama rushed back to Washington Monday to convene national security advisers on a path forward. Well, actually, that's not true. The commander-in-chief did not rush back at all from his long weekend getaway in southern California. He arrived in Palm Springs' sunshine Friday. Saturday he spoke at the University of California-Irvine graduation. He, of course, did a Democrat fundraiser, a feature of almost every trip nowadays. And then the president played golf, lots of golf. On Sunday he also phoned...

t’s been a disastrous couple of weeks for President Barack Obama. His signature legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, is a slow-motion train wreck. His poll numbers have tanked. Now, things have gotten so bad for Obama that former president Jimmy Carter has called President Obama incompetent in the family-friendly pages of Parade magazine. “He’s done the best he could under the circumstances,” Carter said of Obama in an interviewed published on Thursday. “His major accomplishment was Obamacare, and the implementation of it now is questionable at best.” (RELATED: Jimmy Carter: America no longer has a functioning democracy)...

RomneyCare’s pioneering health insurance exchange is headed for the scrap heap. Bay State officials are taking steps this week to junk central parts of their dysfunctional health insurance exchange—the model for President Barack Obama’s health care law—and merge with the federal enrollment site HealthCare.gov. The decision is part of an expensive plan that would occur alongside a parallel, last-ditch attempt to still build a working state system. The state on Monday announced the hiring of hCentive, a Virginia-based contractor that helped construct the Kentucky and Colorado exchanges. The company would rush to build a viable state exchange in time for...

... About 200 of residents and game enthusiasts gathered early Saturday in southeastern New Mexico to watch backhoes and bulldozers dig through the concrete-covered landfill in search of up to a million discarded copies of “E.T. The Extraterrestrial” that the game’s maker wanted to hide forever.... The “E.T.” game is among the factors blamed for the decline of Atari and the collapse in the U.S. of a multi-million dollar video game industry that didn’t bounce back for several years. Tina Amini, deputy editor at gaming website Kotaku, said the game tanked because “it was practically broken.” A recurring flaw, she...

US employers added 192,000 jobs in March; unemployment rate unchanged at 6.7 percent.

People trying to apply and enroll for private health insurance through Obamacare before Monday's midnight deadline discovered the website was "currently unavailable." Healthcare.gov, the online marketplace bedeviled by bugs since its launch last fall, went down for several hours Monday morning, a statement from the Department of Health and Human Services said. It was back online later in the morning after a short time when it put customers in a "queue," meaning they'd be notified by email when they could proceed with enrollment.

THE United States has once again twisted itself into a rhetorical pretzel. As when it threatened military action against Syria if a “red line” was crossed, the Obama administration’s rhetoric about Russia and Ukraine goes far beyond what it will be willing and able to enforce. Earlier this month, President Obama warned that America would “isolate Russia” if it grabbed more land, and yesterday, he suggested that more sanctions were possible. Likewise, Secretary of State John Kerry said the Group of 7 nations were “prepared to go to the hilt” in order to isolate Russia. But Washington’s rhetoric is dangerously...

As the White House scrambles to get people signed up for health insurance before the March 31 deadline, many uninsured Americans say they are still planning to take their chances and remain without coverage. A new study by Bankrate.com shows that about one third of uninsured Americans are going to remain without coverage and opt to pay the penalty. The survey results suggest that the administration’s outreach to uninsured people may be falling short, with more than half of people without insurance unaware of the March 31 deadline—and even more unaware of subsidies that could make their policies more affordable....

If you’d like the government to change something about Obamacare, give the White House a ring. They’re in a flexible mood. President Obama this week approved yet another delay to provisions in the Affordable Care Act, giving insurers until 2016 to sell a type of insurance policy that’s supposed to be banned under the health-reform law. The ban, which was supposed to begin this year, would prevent insurers from selling bare-bones plans that might be affordable but don’t abide by 10 “essential service rules” required under the new law. When insurers began canceling such coverage last year, however, several million...

(Reuters) - With Russia's incursion into Ukraine reviving Cold War-style tensions, President Barack Obama is at risk of suffering a blow to his credibility at a time when he can least afford it: as he tries to convince voters to stick with his fellow Democrats in congressional elections that will help shape his legacy. For five years, Obama has practiced a cautious approach to foreign policy crises, prizing sober diplomacy and the search for consensus over brinkmanship, in prolonged conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the deliberative style that Obama's team sees as a statesmanlike attitude in tune with Americans'...

Obama Threatens To Penalize Putin Over Ukraine By Kathleen Hennessey March 1, 2014 WASHINGTON -- President Obama told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday that the U.S. may boycott an upcoming economic summit in Russia and threatened further penalties if Moscow does not recall its military forces from Ukrainian territory. In a 90-minute telephone call, Obama warned Putin that Russia faces "greater political and economic isolation," according to a White House description of the call. The president suggested the United Nations would take action for what he called a "breach of international law." http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-fg-wn-obama-ukraine-20140301,0,3474561.story#ixzz2ul7lzoFV

During the 2008 presidential campaign, GOP Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin made what has turned out to be a prescient remark about the relevance of a U.S. president's resolve and its potential impact on Russia's posture with the old Soviet Union's satellite states. She observed: "After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama's reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia's Putin to invade Ukraine next." Many in the press ridiculed that notion. Among them was Blake Hounshell, who was then blogging at Foreign Policy Magazine. Characterizing Palin's...

How much does it cost taxpayers to sign up one ObamaCare enrollee? In President Obama's home state of Hawaii, it's $56,819. The Obama administration gave Hawaii $205 million in grants over the past three years to set up its state-run exchange. But so far, only 3,614 Hawaiians have filled out applications — just 40% of the state's enrollment goal. Even if Hawaii were to reach its 9,000 target, it would still cost nearly $23,000 for each enrollee. Hawaii's low sign-up numbers have state officials scrambling to figure out what to do next year, when its exchange is supposed to rely...

A “massive and concerted attack” has been launched by a bot system on numerous bitcoin exchanges, Andreas Antonopoulos has revealed. This has lead to popular exchange Bitstamp putting a temporary halt on all bitcoin withdrawals. Antonopoulos, who is the chief security officer of Blockchain.info, said a DDoS attack is taking Bitcoin’s transaction malleability problem and applying it to many transactions in the network, simultaneously. “So as transactions are being created, malformed/parallel transactions are also being created so as to create a fog of confusion over the entire network, which then affects almost every single implementation out there,” he added.

Enough people were upset with my previous post claiming that Mt. Gox is suffering a bitcoin bank run because it is holding only a fractional bitcoin reserve that it caused me to think twice about the claim.I could have been wrong, but I doubt it.Actually, the backlash was strong enough that it made me think that perhaps I was using some common terms in strange ways. I referred to Mt. Gox as a bank, which is a stretch by some definitions, but it definitely stores bitcoin for clients and as such, acts as a custodian.Maybe it was the term “bank...

One in five Obamacare "enrollees" could have their plans cancelled for failure to pay their first month's premium. That figure is based on reports from health insurers themselves, some of whom have made 10 attempts to collect the first payment.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Well, listening to that excerpt from Ed Henry, you would think that's the campaign speech of someone running against Barack Obama. Obama is indicting the four years, the five years he's been president. He said the rich have done well, everybody else has stalled, inequality has increased. Well, the four years, the five years are his years. Essentially, he's saying my job now is to undo what I have done in the five years of my presidency. It's hardly sort of a ringing call to arms. I'm sure they now tested all of these words, inequality, opportunity, all...