Daniel Stone

All 41 Republicans—and six Democrats—fail to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from cracking down on top polluters.

California's biggest vote Tuesday night was to open primaries to the whole state starting in 2012. What that will mean for the state's political parties and interest groups.

Radical times call for radical ideas, and today, California voters are considering something pretty different. Specifically: getting rid of partisan primaries.

The gulf spill may not push Congress to pass its climate and energy bill. But Obama hopes people watching horrified at home won't accept anything less.

Speaking before reporters in the Rose Garden, the president says he won't be approving new deepwater drilling until "we can be confident we've done what's necessary to prevent history from repeating itself."

After three days of pumping a viscous mud mixture into the oil well in the gulf, on-scene engineers have admitted that the Top Kill measure designed to stop the leak of oil has failed. What are the next steps?

The president was remarkably rigid during his visit to the gulf Friday. If he had gotten down in the muck, or angrily shaken his fist, it would have earned precious political capital with the region's residents and fishermen.

On the same day that engineers are completing the top-kill procedure to stem the flow of oil from the Gulf of Mexico seabed, Washington is executing a top-kill procedure of its own at the Minerals Management Service. Elizabeth Birnbaum, head of the agency that oversees drilling for oil and natural gas, was asked to resign from her post this morning by the Obama administration.

Officials are claiming the latest process to stop the Gulf of Mexico oil spill—which has surpassed the Exxon Valdez disaster as the largest in American history—is working.

Last week, after BP had already dropped thousands of gallons of chemical dispersants onto the oil slick in the Gulf, the Environmental Protection Agency took a second look at the impact of the chemicals on marine life and in wetlands.

For all the bad press, insults and calls of incompetence that BP has had to stomach over the past few weeks, there's a stark reality floating through Washington: in managing the Gulf clean-up, there's no alternative.

Humor in the workplace can be fun. But this morning, when The New York Times reported that a reception in Alaska at the regional office of the Minerals Management Service—the agency responsible for regulating offshore drilling—included a cake with the words "Drill, Baby, Drill," not many people were laughing.

It's been a long week of criticism in Washington. Criticism, that is, of Arizona's controversial immigration law. President Obama has taken several high-profile swings at the measure, calling it "misguided" and then "misdirected" this week at a presser with Mexican President Felipe Calderón.

Knowing that its name and future are at stake, BP has had to walk a fine line. Doing nothing to quell public outrage over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill would quickly erode the company's image. But undertaking aggressive and overt marketing to downplay the effects of the incident could just as easily paint the company as more concerned with profits than ecological impact.

It's not a perfect comparison, but there are striking similarities between joint presidential press conferences and funerals. Both are formalities, produced simply because they have to be.

State dinners don't happen often—tonight's is only the second of Obama's presidency—which makes this evening's black-tie affair honoring Mexico's Felipe Calderón the hottest ticket in town.

Imagery is always deliberate in political apologies. Clearly, Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut's attorney general and Democratic Senate candidate, put some thought into how he'd apologize in front of the cameras just hours after a devastating front-page story in The New York Times implicated he had lied on several occasions about serving in Vietnam.

  It's certainly a day to remember for Richard Blumenthal after The New York Times published a scoop last night exposing the Connecticut Democrat's inconsistent statements about his Marine Corps service in Vietnam.

Today is Election Day in Pennsylvania, and that means the deep-pocketed electoral machine in the Keystone State is in full swing. At stake is the future of Sen.

[youtube:jU7fhIO7DG0] We're a little late getting to it, but this campaign ad by Dale Peterson, who's running for the Republican nomination for Alabama agriculture commissioner, is just too good not to post.

Politics is nothing if not fickle, a swinging pendulum constantly in motion. It's a painful or gleeful reality, depending on what side you're on. For most of the year, the narrative has been black and white: the GOP's gain in November will come at the expense of Democrats.

A letter fired off today from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano to BP chief executive Tony Hayward seeks to get at just who will be picking up the tab for the full cleanup of the gulf spill and the claims of economic loss from local residents.

Before the oil spill, at least, President Obama had proposed opening tracts of the Atlantic seabed to energy developers. But on dry land, the administration is more conservationist.

The Environmental Protection Agency kept the media's focus on energy and climate this week with a new announcement that in July of next year, it would begin a sweeping crackdown on some of the country's biggest polluters.

British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward didn't help himself, or his company, this morning when he tried to put the size of the gulf oil spill in perspective. "The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into [the Gulf of Mexico] is tiny in relation to the total water volume," he said.True, but not exactly helpful.

The story has gone from bad to worse for Meg Whitman. On the same day that a new poll shows the California-governor hopeful's lead disappearing, state reporters have begun amplifying their complaints that Whitman was simply too isolated from the media.

Conservative commentator Michael Savage has a penchant for being racy and provocative. But even we were surprised to see a sit-down he did in this month's Playboy. (Can't say we've ever heard of this magazine, although word around the office is that they do great journalism.) Playboy writer David Hochman spent 16 hours interviewing Savage, an experience he said was "incredibly difficult." Savage's opinions were often incendiary to the point of being like "poison." In this case, however, the...

The energy bill cometh. That was how The Washington Post's Ezra Klein characterized the scene in Washington today—the start of the official debate about the nation's plan to combat climate change and craft a new energy landscape. (You can read the full bill here, or an official summary here.)There's a lot in there, packed in tight.

It wasn't that long ago that proponents of oil drilling, and even President Obama, were arguing that the threat of spills had been substantially reduced thanks to new advances in drilling technology. It's a claim that sounds humbling in light of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. But rather than harp on the past, environmentalists are focusing their efforts on the future, specifically this summer, when another round of exploratory drilling is set to begin off the pristine coasts of Alaska.

President Obama's process to select Solicitor General Elena Kagan began the day after outgoing justice John Paul Stevens announced his retirement, according to a White House official.