John Boehner

House speaker John Boehner is criticizing the White House's reaction to the revalations, first reported by Stephen F. Hayes for THE WEEKLY STANDARD, that the administration's talking points on the terrorist attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi last September were altered. From a press release from the speaker's office:

House speaker John Boehner might support the Internet tax bill. But it isn't too likely, he indicated in an interview with Bloomberg Television.

Congress is reportedly trying to exempt itself from Obamacare. "Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks" to figure out how to do this, Politico reports.

Congress is looking at ways to escape the coils of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) by making itself and its employees exempt from the provisions of the act.  This show of confidence in its own handiwork – the major legislative accomplishment of the Obama administration – is pretty much what the public has come to expect of the political class. As John Brensnahan & Jake Sherman write in Politico:

White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer was asked Wednesday morning to decribe what he considers President Obama’s "precepts" for getting things done in Washington. “There’s almost no characteristic more important than discipline,” Pfeiffer responded.

What’s the purpose of Barack Obama’s “charm offensive?” And who is the target?

Wall Street has taken to thinking in terms of walls. There is a “wall of money” waiting to tumble down on stock markets and into corporate investments if only investors could climb the “wall of worry” constructed by America’s politicians who can’t seem to put the nation’s finances in order.

Steve Hayes, with Juan Williams and Charles Krauthammer, last night on Fox News:

Perhaps the least surprising headline in the aftermath of the tax deal last week was the one in Politico declaring that congressional Democrats are planning to run against “chaos” in the 2014 midterm elections. It’s unsurprising because Democrats have been working, with considerable success, to establish the proposition that Washington is dysfunctional because of the GOP.

It has been widely reported that the recently passed “fiscal cliff” deal entails a tax hike with no corresponding spending cuts.  Other reports claim that the deal imposes a 41-to-1 ratio of tax hikes to spending cuts.  But neither of these claims is correct.

There is at least one thing to like about the tax-raising, can-kicking deal that avoided the fiscal cliff: It gave the U.S. military a 60-day reprieve from the consequences of sequestration.

The AP reports that John Boehner will remain speaker of the House:

Republican John Boehner of Ohio has been re-elected as speaker of the House of Representatives. He received 219 votes, with 193 going for Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and 15 voting for another candidate or present. Six members did not vote.