The White House is weighing a far broader and more comprehensive approach to curbing the nation's gun violence than simply reinstating an expired ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, according to multiple people involved in the administration's discussions.

Jonathan Alter, Bloomberg
You can already hear the rumbling in the distance -- a train of noisy liberal Democrats barreling straight for the White House. They should arrive just in time for President Barack Obama's second inauguration.The president already has his hands full dealing with angry and unrealistic Republicans. Now he's getting reacquainted with their counterparts on the left -- a less ideologically inflexible bunch but not necessarily any more susceptible to reason.

WASHINGTON, Jan 1 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama departed the White House on Tuesday to resume his Hawaii vacation shortly after Congress approved legislation that raises taxes on the wealthiest Americans and avoids the "fiscal cliff" of across-the-board tax increases and spending cuts.

The president left the White House shortly before midnight. He had cut his vacation short on Wednesday to oversee negotiation of a deal before a year-end deadline.

Republicans alarmed at the apparent challenges they face in winning the White House are preparing an all-out assault on the Electoral College system in critical states, an initiative that would significantly ease the party's path to the Oval Office.

Frank Bruni, New York Times
LAST week I stumbled across this headline: “Gov. Cuomo passes on supporting Hillary Clinton for 2016 presidential bid.” Frank Bruni Take a moment. Savor the epic, eye-crossing absurdity of that. For starters there’s no bid. Not officially. Not yet. A whole lot can happen in the three years between now and the wintry Iowa caucuses of 2016, which might not even be wintry by then, global warming and all. Also, Andrew Cuomo, New York’s top dog, seems to have more than a mild interest in a move to the White...

Molly Ball, The Atlantic
How activists rewrote the political playbook, reversed decades of defeat, and finally won over voters.On May 9, President Obama sat for an interview in the White House with the ABC News anchor Robin Roberts. Both of them knew what she'd been summoned there to discuss, and Roberts didn't waste any time. "So, Mr. President," she said, "are you still opposed to same-sex marriage?"

Robert Pear, NYT
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Friday that more than half the states had rejected its pleas to set up their own health insurance exchanges, dealing a setback to President Obama’s hopes that Republicans would join a White House campaign to provide health insurance to all Americans.Friday was the deadline for states to notify the federal government of their plans, and administration officials had been hoping that Mr. Obama’s re-election would overcome resistance to the new health care law. 

Molly Ball, The Atlantic
On May 9, President Obama sat for an interview in the White House with the ABC News anchor Robin Roberts. Both of them knew what she'd been summoned there to discuss, and Roberts didn't waste any time. "So, Mr. President," she said, "are you still opposed to same-sex marriage?"Obama was ready for the question. A few days before, Vice President Biden had said on Meet the Press that he was "comfortable" with men marrying men and women marrying women.

Senior White House and Justice Department officials are considering plans for legal action against Colorado and Washington that could undermine voter-approved initiatives to legalize the recreational use of marijuana in those states, according to several people familiar with the deliberations.

Kimberley Strassel, Wall St. Journal
To read the current fiscal-cliff coverage, President Obama holds the upper hand and is poised for the "victory" of winning an increase in the top two tax rates.So successful has the White House been in defining this fight, few have stopped to consider how paltry that victory is likely to be. For a short-term win on this ideological issue, President Obama may well cede most everything else.Let us assume that Mr. Obama is correct in his bet that the GOP will prove more responsible than he is and won't cliff-dive. The president's recent baiting of...

WASHINGTON -- Facing the possibility that President Obama might not win a second term, his administration accelerated work in the weeks before the election to develop explicit rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by unmanned drones, so that a new president would inherit clear standards and procedures, according to two administration officials.

Keith Koffler, White House Dossier
1. A failure to BE a conservative.Every time Republicans nominate a candidate who doesn’t strongly back conservative ideals – George H.W. Bush in 1992, Bob Dole in 1996, and John McCain in 2008 – they lose. And every time a moderate candidate loses, everyone calls for Republicans to throw the “crazy conservatives” out of the Party and turn everyone into moderates.Go Figyah.

Sean Trende, RealClearPolitics
One of the more intriguing narratives for election 2012 was proposed by political scientist Brendan Nyhan fairly early on: that it was "Bizarro 2004." The parallels to that year certainly were eerie: An incumbent adored by his base but with middling approval ratings nationally faces off against an uncharismatic, wishy-washy official from Massachusetts. The race is tight during the summer until the president breaks open a significant lead after his convention.

Nancy Cordes, CBS
Eager to rebut any sign of slowing momentum in the closing weeks of the race, Obama campaign officials are pushing back forcefully against a new Associated Press-GfK poll that indicates Mitt Romney has erased President Obama's double-digit advantage with women voters."If you look at the aggregate of all the polls, what you see is that the president has a very strong advantage among women," White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer told reporters during a flight from Tampa, Fla., to Richmond, Va. "In all battleground states, (Mr. Obama) continues to have an advantage...

The CIA is urging the White House to approve a significant expansion of the agency’s fleet of armed drones, a move that would extend the spy service’s decade-long transformation into a paramilitary force, U.S. officials said.

The proposal by CIA Director David H. Petraeus would bolster the agency’s ability to sustain its campaigns of lethal strikes in Pakistan and Yemen and enable it, if directed, to shift aircraft to emerging al-Qaeda threats in North Africa or other trouble spots, officials said.

Joan Vennochi, BostonGlobe
Barack Obama won the hope vote in 2008. Now, to keep the White House, President Obama needs to win back the disappointed.Michael Jones is one of them. Jones, one of the questioners during Tuesday night's debate, wanted to know what the president has done to earn his support in 2012. This time around, "I'm not that optimistic," said Jones.

Anna Palmer, Politico
President Barack Obama’s gone further than any president to keep lobbyists out of the White House — even signing executive orders to do it.But the mood on K Street is brightening. 

Tim Carney, Examiner
If Romney wins, will lobbyists defile the White House that Obama has kept so clean and so pure? That’s what Politico suggests with this piece today headlined “Lobbyists ready for a comeback under Romney.”    President Barack Obama’s gone further than any president to keep lobbyists out of the White House — even signing executive orders to do it.

Mickey Kaus, The Daily Caller
It sure looks like Vice President Joe Biden put the blame on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his potential 2016 rival, for the security failings Benghazi. "We weren't told they wanted more security,"Â Biden declared. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney backed Biden up, saying it's a State Department (i.e. Hillary)  issue.

David Jackson, USA Today
1:24PM EDT October 12. 2012 - The White House is defending Vice President Biden over his debate statement that "we weren't told" about requests for more security at a U.S. consulate in Libya before the Sept. 11 attack that killed ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others.White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Biden was referring to President Obama, the White House, and himself, as opposed to the State Department and other parts of the government. 

Major Garrett, National Jrnl
President Obama walks on the South Lawn of the White House on Tuesday after returning from campaigning in Ohio and California. Rattled, dismayed, and shaken, President Obama's national campaign is divided into two camps: impassive warhorses and anxiety-ridden newbies.The battle-scarred operatives have been doing nonstop psychic triage since the first presidential debate, calming nerves and reassuring the shaken that campaigns have their ups and downs.

Lynn Sweet, Chicago Sun-Times
For the first time, Mitt Romney is ahead of Barack Obama in polls - chipping away at Obama’s hold on women voters and gaining in favorability ratings. Romney also has pulled ahead of Obama in surveys in several battleground states key to winning the 270 electoral votes needed to claim the White House.

Gabriel Malor, New York Daily News
It has been 15 days since the attack in Libya. And where are we? President Obama, who first confidently (but incorrectly) declared that the attack grew spontaneously out of a protest over a YouTube video, has finally admitted that it was an act of terrorism directed against Americans on the anniversary of 9/11. There was no protest before the attack, we now know.We now know this because of journalists in Libya. We know this because of Libya's own officials. But we know hardly anything from our own government about what happened in Libya because most of what we were told by the White...