Pentagon Is Ordered to Expand Potential Targets in Syria With a Focus on Forces  —  WASHINGTON — President Obama has directed the Pentagon to develop an expanded list of potential targets in Syria in response to intelligence suggesting that the government of President Bashar al-Assad …

Iran Plots Revenge, U.S. Says  —  Officials Say Intercepted Message to Militants Orders Reprisals in Iraq if Syria Hit  —  WASHINGTON—The U.S. has intercepted an order from Iran to militants in Iraq to attack the U.S. Embassy and other American interests in Baghdad in the event of a strike on Syria …

President Obama could lose big on Syria in House  —  If the House voted today on a resolution to attack Syria, President Barack Obama would lose — and lose big.  —  That's the private assessment of House Republican and Democratic lawmakers and aides who are closely involved in the process.

Why America Is Saying ‘No’  —  Syria and Obama: Wrong time, wrong place, wrong plan, wrong man.  —  It is hard, if you've got a head and a heart, to come down against a strong U.S. response to Syria's use of chemical weapons against its civilian population.

Putin warns Russia could come to Syria's aid over US strike  —  As he touched down in St. Petersburg on Thursday morning, President Obama greeted his host Vladimir Putin with a handshake and a smile.  —  But the cordial greeting belies the tinderbox the two leaders are sitting on …

Years of Tragic Waste  —  In a few days, we'll reach the fifth anniversary of the fall of Lehman Brothers — the moment when a recession, which was bad enough, turned into something much scarier.  Suddenly, we were looking at the real possibility of economic catastrophe.  —  And the catastrophe came.

Obama Has No ‘Intention’ To Strike Syria If Congress Says No … “The president of course has the authority to act” even if Congress does not support his plan for a military strike on Syria, White House deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep earlier today.

The Right Vote  —  The statesmanlike case for voting Yes on the congressional resolution to use force against the Assad regime has been made widely and well by conservative foreign policy thinkers.  At the end, the case boils down to this: As a policy matter, a Yes vote may be problematic in all kinds of ways.

Rep. Alan Grayson: Syria Intelligence Manipulated  —  Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., who is aggressively lobbying against a military strike on Syria, says the Obama administration has manipulated intelligence to push its case for U.S. involvement in the country's two-year civil war.

Ignore the headlines.  This was a very bad jobs report.  —  View Photo Gallery —If you're on the job hunt, employment opportunities are no longer limited to the East or West Coast.  Job aggregation Web site Bright.com recently ranked metro areas with the highest number of job openings.

Obama: I'm Bypassing the ‘Hocus Pocus’ of the United Nations  —  President Obama said that the U.S. talk of military action in Syria is bypassing the “hocus pocus” of the U.N.:  —  “Frankly, if we weren't talking about the need for an international response right now, this wouldn't be what everybody …

New Inquiry for Bachmann on Her Presidential Race  —  Representative Michele Bachmann's presidential hopes ended 20 months ago, but her brief and chaotic campaign continues to be the focus of ethics investigations.  —  The latest is a federal inquiry into whether an outside “super PAC” …

Bad Bet: Why Republicans Can't Win With Whites Alone  —  Obama lost key groups of white voters by the largest margins since the 1980s, but that doesn't mean Republicans can rely on whites to retake the White House.  —  This much is undisputed: In 2012, President Obama lost white voters …

The Bush Burden  —  He's there in every corner of Congress where a microphone fronts a politician, there in Russia and the British Parliament and the Vatican.  You may think George W. Bush is at home in his bathtub, painting pictures of his toenails, but in fact he's the biggest presence in the debate over what to do in Syria.

Police: Afghan militants drag female author out of her home, shoot her dead  —  Suspected Taliban militants in Afghanistan on Thursday shot dead an Indian woman whose memoir about marrying an Afghan and life under the Islamist militia was made into a Bollywood movie, officials said.

Activists Ask Iowa Judge To Stop Purge Of Non-Citizens From Voter Rolls  —  The Iowa chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa have sued Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz (R) over a rule that aims to remove names from voter rolls …

Decision to Publish Against Government Request Was ‘Not a Particularly Anguished One’  —  The New York Times has come under fire in the past for agreeing to government requests to hold back sensitive stories or information, but it bucked such requests in publishing a front-page article in Friday's paper.

Did Obama even have a war plan for Capitol Hill?  —  The Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday voted 10-7 to approve President Obama's request for an authorization to use military force in Syria.  The Boston Globe reports the vote gives “more momentum to the White House plan.”