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Twitter exploded last night, after Bob Woodward revealed that White House official had warned him he would “regret” saying Obama had moved the goal posts on sequestration. Predictably, conservatives latched onto this, as it confirmed our suspicion about the Obama Administration’s “Chicago-style” of politics. A lot of mainstream journalists bought into this, too — reflexively believing anything the great Bob Woodward says. Of course, Woodward (who was expert at trolling for publicity before the internet even existed), benefits greatly from the publicity (nothing sells books like controversy).

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I don't know, folks. I don't know. I'm just not sure that what we're dealing with here is a "you're gonna have a dead horse in your bed tomorrow morning" kind of threat. I don't think that's what we're dealing with. I do think the White House is gonna take care of Woodward with a death panel down the road. That's how they're gonna deal with this. We'll never know. Woodward's gonna get sick and the death panel will come in there and that will be that. (interruption) No. No, no. There's not gonna be a drone...

.@WhiteHouse fight with Woodward is a complete sideshow. Instead of fighting out-of-control spending, @WhiteHouse is fighting Woodward — Gov. Bobby Jindal (@BobbyJindal) February 28, 2013 You cant grow the economy by taking money out of the economy.Yet that's the president's plan.Its #governmentgreed nationalreview.com/blogs/print/34…— Gov. Bobby Jindal (@BobbyJindal) February 28, 2013 Instead of running LA, Jindal attacking WH MT @BobbyJindal: Instead of fighting out-of-control spending, @WhiteHouse is fighting Woodward— (@michaelscherer) February 28, 2013 @michaelscherer @BobbyJindal @whitehouse instead of writing your article, which is probably past due, you're tweeting about Jindal— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) February 28, 2013

Bob Woodward has suggested that the White House threatened him. Many of his colleagues in the press corps aren't buying it. By the standards of this White House, a statement like the one senior White House official Gene Sperling wrote to Woodward last week -- "I think you will regret staking out that claim" -- is both mild and familiar, reporters who have dealt with the Obama administration say. "It's not a big deal. You've been yelled at by people in the White House, I've been yelled at by people in the White House -- I'm sure this has happened...

Scandal: A senior administration official tells the reporter who unearthed Watergate he "will" regret challenging the president on the cause and effects of sequestration. Keep digging, Bob. Nobody died at Watergate. If President Obama has an enemies list, Bob Woodward is probably at the top of it. After all, it was Woodward who started the unraveling of the president's "sequestration apocalypse" mantra by confirming it was the White House's idea in the first place. When President Obama said the "sequester is not something that I proposed," he lied. His then-OMB Director Jack Lew, recently confirmed as Treasury Secretary, and White...

The media universe is in a tizzy over the revelation that a White House official told Bob Woodward he would “regret” his coverage of the White House’s attempt to spin the sequestration debate. While I commend Bob Woodward’s coverage, which rings true given what my own Republican contacts have said, now that we know that Gene Sperling was the source for the quotation, and can read the email exchange, it is clear that the statement, while certainly regrettable, was not some ham-fisted attempt to intimidate Woodward.

If Bob Woodward's experience wasn't quite as harrowing as he first let on, Lanny Davis' anecdote sounds more like the real deal. Bill Clinton's former special counsel told Larry O’Connor and Brian Wilson on WMAL that his columns at The Washington Times got the Obama administration so angry, they threatened Davis' editor with removing the paper's accreditation to cover the White House:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE AUSIO Lanny Davis, formerly a special counsel to President Bill Clinton, told WMAL’s Brian Wilson and Larry O’Connor that a White House official once threatened to have The Washington Times’ White House credentials revoked...

Woodward, Lanny Davis, and now Ron Fournier. How come it’s the older, more established D.C. hands who are piping up about being strongarmed by the White House and not the younger, less established ones? Is it because the young’uns have developed a thicker skin from being challenged more often? Because they’re small enough potatoes that Team Hopenchange doesn’t bother wasting much time yelling at them? Because Woodward and Fournier are better positioned career-wise to challenge the White House? Or because younger liberal journos are “team players” for The One in a way that older reporters simply aren’t?Anyway. Another ray of...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I should say I've been keeping track of this at PJ Media. AARP is not happy with David Plouffe's tweet about Woodward being too old to do his job well anymore. They are not happy about it. There's nothing they can do about it but they're not happy about it. Woodward is the first guy to actually draw blood from this regime in five years -- and that, the regime doesn't like. Our old buddy Ron Fournier at the National Journal has a piece about this, and he said you people are being bamboozled if you think...

The weirdest and most unpredictable turn of the great budget war has been the emergence of Bob Woodward as flashpoint, news-driver, and sudden Republican hero. Woodward published an op-ed last weekend asserting that the Obama administration was “moving the goalposts” from its 2011 debt deal with the Republican House. Woodward now reports that he was threatened by an administration staffer, who turns out to be Economic Council director Gene Sperling. “I think you will regret staking out that claim,” said Sperling. In interviews with CNN and Politico, Woodward portrays this dark warning in sinister terms: Woodward repeated the last sentence,...

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Actually, the GOP bill wasn't designed to avert cuts, it was designed to avert these cuts by giving Obama the power to replace them with equivalent cuts of his choosing. He's been screaming for weeks that the sequester will chop crucial services by hitting agencies indiscriminately across the board, right? Well, there's the solution --- let Obama protect the important stuff, like naval deployments, by reinstating the Pentagon's money and cutting stuff like cowboy poetry festivals instead. Result: The bill fails, 38-60. So terrified was the White House of the political responsibility of deciding which arms of government should bear...

<p>WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Automatic federal budget cuts of $85 billion looked certain to kick in after a pair of bills to replace them failed in the Senate on Thursday.</p> <p>Getty Images Enlarge Image Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.</p> <p>Neither a Democratic nor a Republican bill aimed at replacing the so-called sequester was able to get enough support to win a test vote on Thursday. While senators from both parties hadn’t expected passage, the bills represented a last-ditch legislative effort to replace the across-the-board cuts to domestic and military spending.</p>

Exclusive: The Woodward, Sperling emails revealed By: Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei February 28, 2013 08:30 AM EST POLITICO’s “Behind the Curtain” column last night quoted Bob Woodward as saying that a senior White House official has told him in an email he would “regret” questioning White House statements on the origins of sequestration. The official in question is Gene Sperling, economic adviser to the president. The White House has since pushed back, saying the exchange was far more innocuous than Woodward claims. We have obtained, exclusively, the exchange. Here it is: From Gene Sperling to Bob Woodward on Feb....

Go to Google News and enter "Lanny Davis Threats" in the search bar. Wow. This is incredible. Anyone here can have a field day in posting these articles here at FR. Just thought I would give a heads-up!

Yes, he used the word "madness." After years of enduring insanity at the White House saying so is just now making headlines...Oh, and the White House told him he'd regret it. See the email here.Welcome to the club, Bob.

The sequester is rapidly approaching. If no one stops it, we’ll experience automatic and devastating spending cuts of $84 billion between now and this fall. There are many insane things about this, but one in particular strikes me as ludicrous beyond comprehension: the deficit has already shrunk by $84 billion so far this fiscal year. Get it? The whole point of the sequester was to cut the deficit—meaning the difference between what the government makes in taxes and what it spends. Yet through natural forces, the deficit has already been cut by essentially the same amount the sequester would cut. Why everyone—the president,...

WASHINGTON -- Bob Woodward isn't the only person who's received threats for airing the Obama administration's dirty laundry. It seems anyone is a potential target of the White House these days - even former senior members of the Clinton administration. A day after Woodward's claim that a senior White House official had told him he would "regret" writing a column criticizing President Obama's stance on the sequester, Lanny Davis, a longtime close advisor to President Bill Clinton, told WMAL's Mornings on the Mall Thursday he had received similar threats for newspaper columns he had written about Obama in the Washington...

Politics: Here's a pretty good sign that President Obama is losing the sequester fight: Even his best friends in the press are starting to chafe at the desperate and deceptive warnings coming from him and his administration. At one of his countless anti-sequester events, Obama warned that the budget cuts will "gut critical investments," "weaken America's economic recovery" and "weaken our military readiness." He said tens of thousands of parents will scramble to find child care, and hundreds of thousands will "lose access to primary care and preventive care." [snip] Even the media appear — incredibly — to be growing...

This year, Hollywood hit award pay dirt for political dramas inspired by American history. Unlike “The Avengers” — the top-grossing superhero movie — best-picture nominees “Argo,” “Lincoln” and “Zero Dark Thirty” featured authentic, determined and courageous Americans who endured adversity and mortal danger to overcome morally inferior antagonists. Though we're living through the umpteenth act of a gory political spectacle involving the U.S. budget, Think Again if you expect that Quentin Tarantino will adapt it for the silver screen. Devoid of heroes or valiant rescues, the drama serially unfolding in Washington isn't even telenovela-worthy, particularly the latest installment known as...