The Edge: Pelosi Set to Star in Another Election

National Journal Staff

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Pelosi Set to Star in Another Election

Former and perhaps future House speaker Nancy Pelosi is at the center of both President Obama's push to win a Democratic House majority and the House GOP's drive to block him.

Piling on the praise at a fundraiser Wednesday night, Obama called Pelosi "tough as nails," "a great politician," a great leader," and "a great friend." He said he could not have a better partner than her and could not be prouder of her and "could not be more anxious and eager to have her back as speaker of the House."

A different Pelosi turns up in posts on the House Republican campaign committee blog – sending a memo on Obamacare, raising money for a "liberal protégé," and failing to land a prime recruit (proof that "running on the Obama-Pelosi ticket in 2014 is too toxic to overcome").

A CNN/ORC poll in March found that half the country has an unfavorable opinion of Pelosi, compared with 32 percent favorable. House Republicans fare far worse, but they won't be cutting her a break. She's a proven fundraiser – for both sides.

Jill Lawrence
@JillDLawrence

TOP NEWS

OBAMA TO NOMINATE COMEY TO LEAD FBI. President Obama will nominate former Justice Department official James Comey, a Republican, to serve as FBI director, The New York Times reports. Comey reportedly was selected over White House counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco, whose former role at the DOJ had led to concerns that Republicans would raise the issue of the Benghazi attacks during the confirmation process. Comey, who served as acting attorney general in 2004 while then-AG John Ashcroft recuperated from surgery, clashed with White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card over the reauthorization of a warrantless wiretapping program. Read more

  • Comey also challenged the Bush administration on "enhanced interrogation," National Journal's Brian Resnick writes. "People may think it strange to hear me say I miss John Ashcroft, but as intimidated as he could be by the WH, when it came to crunch-time, he stood up, even from an intensive care hospital bed. That backbone is gone," Comey wrote in a 2005 e-mail. Read more

LETTER TO OBAMA MAY CONTAIN RICIN, BEARS SHREVEPORT POSTMARK. A letter addressed to President Obama that may have been contaminated with ricin also shares a Shreveport, La., postmark with two ricin-tainted letters containing threats to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, CBS News reports. Secret Service spokesperson Edwin Donovan said that the bureau's joint terrorism task force is handling the investigation. The two letters referencing Bloomberg, postmarked May 20, "contained a pink-orange, oily substance, and each letter threatened bodily harm against the mayor and made references to his stance on gun control." Read more

MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS DECLINE HOLDER INVITE OVER OFF-THE-RECORD STATUS. Several media organizations have said that they will not meet with Attorney General Eric Holder to discuss the Justice Department's monitoring of journalists as part of its leak investigations, The Hill reports. The New York Times, the Associated Press, The Huffington Post, and CNN issued separate statements explaining their objections to the off-the-record meeting. "We will not be attending the session at DOJ," said New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson in a statement. "It isn't appropriate for us to attend an off-the-record meeting with the Attorney General. Our Washington bureau is aggressively covering the department's handling of leak investigations at this time." Read more

  • National Journal's Ron Fournier writes that while the dustup over the meeting is the ultimate inside-baseball story, it does highlight the Obama administration's ignorance of the media's role in Washington as well as the malpractice that permeates its communications operation. Read more

McCAIN: SYRIAN VISIT 'VERY MOVING,' REBELS WANT U.S. TO ARM THEM. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., discussed his Monday visit to Syria in an appearance Wednesday on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360. "It was a very moving experience to meet these fighters who have been struggling now for over two years," McCain said. McCain said that the rebels want the United States to supply them with weapons in the conflict against Assad. "Their message was, to be frank with you: They do not understand," he said. "They do not understand why we won't help them." Read more

  • Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told a Hezbollah television network that his government has taken delivery of some components of a missile system from Russia, and will receive the remainder soon. Israeli officials challenged Assad's assertion, claiming that the weapons are not yet fully operational. Read more

GOOGLE CHAIR IS POURING 'MILLIONS' INTO PROGRESSIVE BIG DATA. Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt is pouring "several million" dollars into creating a digital analytics firm made up of Obama for America alums. The new consultancy, Civis Analytics, is being headed up by 30-year-old Dan Wagner and will be based in Chicago, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. "The plan is to bring the same Big Data expertise that guided the most expensive presidential campaign in history to companies and nonprofits," Joshua Green writes. Read more

WASHINGTON-BASED SERIES BY 'DOONESBURY' CARTOONIST TO AIR ON AMAZON. Amazon Studios has green-lighted production on Alpha House, an original series from Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau focusing on four Republican senators sharing a Capitol Hill row house. The company will produce 13 episodes to air in 2013 and early 2014. Bloomberg's Jonathan Alter, an executive producer on the series, said that Netflix's House of Cards improved the chances for Alpha House. "It helped introduce people to the idea of watching online television, and especially online television about politics," said Alter. The show stars John Goodman, Clark Johnson, Matt Malloy, and Mark Consuelos, while Bill Murray has a cameo in the pilot. Read more

REID'S RAZOR-THIN MARGIN ON 'NUCLEAR OPTION.' Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., may have the votes to reform the filibuster, a "nuclear option" to which he has alluded in the fight over judicial nominations, The Atlantic Wire's Philip Bump writes. According to The Hill, Reid has just 51 votes, meaning that if a single Democrat defects, he could be forced to ask Vice President Biden to cast the tiebreaking vote, a rare and controversial move—and one Biden has never made. Still, Bump writes, the battle over the filibuster may not happen. "[I]f Reid loses even one more vote, the idea becomes either unwinnable or politically much more fraught. It's a move of last resort—but that may be where Democrats consider themselves." Read more

D.C. REGION LARGELY UNTOUCHED BY BUDGET SEQUESTRATION. The Washington metropolitan area has yet to show significant adverse effects from sequestration, The Washington Post reports. The region has added 40,000 jobs in the past few months, while data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated that unemployment remained steady at 5.3 percent. "I think the sequestration isn't going to be quite as bad as a lot of people had feared, at least in terms of direct job losses," said Moody's Analytics associate analyst James Bohnaker. "The reason for that is that people were already planning for this last year." Still, with federal employees subject to unpaid furloughs, the region may yet feel the impact of the cuts. Read more

TOMORROW

BRIEFING ON SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE TRUST FUND REPORT. A host of Cabinet officials, including Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Acting Labor Secretary Seth Harris, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Marilyn Tavenner, along with Acting Commissioner of Social Security and trustee Carolyn Colvin and public trustees Charles Blahous and Robert Reischauer hold a media briefing on the release of the annual reports from the boards of trustees for the Social Security and Medicare trust funds.

BIDEN TO HOLD PRESS CONFERENCE IN BRAZIL. Vice President Joe Biden will meet with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and will later deliver statements to the media from Brasilia.

WHITE HOUSE TO HOLD 'GEEK' GOOGLE+ HANGOUT. The White House holds a "We the Geeks" Google+ Hangout, beginning at 2 p.m., to discuss asteroid identification, characterization, resource utilization, and hazard mitigation.

QUOTABLE

"I've never understood the allure of putting your name on a building that was built with taxpayers' money." – Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C. (Washington Post)

BEDTIME READING

COMEY AND MUELLER: A FRIENDSHIP FORGED OVER A SHARED HISTORY. As James Comey is likely be named by President Obama as the person to take over the reins of the FBI from current director Bob Mueller, The Washingtonian details the rise of the two men through the D.C. intelligence community, how they formed a friendship, and their role in controversy surrounding the reauthorization of the Terrorist Surveillance Program, and in particular Stellar Wind, an NSA wiretapping code. In an intense showdown narrated here, Mueller, who was the point person for negotiations with the White House, Comey, Ashcroft, and other senior officials at the FBI and Justice Department, were prepared to resign over the administration's push to reauthorize the program. Read more

REALITY CHECK

STUDY: IMMIGRANTS A NET POSITIVE FOR MEDICARE. The logic behind the argument that immigrants are a drain on resources may seem sound—many are low-skilled and face a steep cultural learning curve—but a recent study suggests the exact opposite, National Journal's Niraj Chokshi reports. Between 2002 and 2009, immigrants—citizens or not—contributed $115 billion more to Medicare than they used, according to a new study in Health Affairs, the reputable health policy journal. The U.S.-born, on the other hand, generated a $28 billion deficit. Immigrants, it turns out, may be helping to delay a budget reckoning. Read more

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