Analysis: Obama’s ‘blame me’ means ‘move on’

President Obama topped a town hall appearance Wednesday by claiming responsibility for the bonuses paid out to executives at the bailed-out insurance giant American International Group, saying, "I’m outraged, too." Cushioned by high approval ratings, analysts said Obama can emerge from this controversy relatively unscathed, but there’s only so many times he can get away with saying, “Blame me.” AIG accepted more than $170 billion in federal assistance in the past six months. It was revealed this week that since accepting those funds, the company doled out more than $165 million in bonuses.

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Is President Obama’s Environmental Agenda Losing Out?

Ask an Administration official what to expect legislatively this year and the answer will probably fall along these lines: reregulation of the financial markets, followed by the budget, health care and then green jobs. It is a massive agenda for President Barack Obama’s first year in office, and already some in the environmental community are worried that their agenda will be sacrificed.

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Obama blasts AIG bonuses, admits ‘buck stops with me’

President Obama said Wednesday that no one in his administration had been responsible for supervising ailing insurance giant AIG but that ultimately, the buck stops with him. “Nobody here drafted those contracts; nobody here was responsible for supervising AIG and allowing themselves to put the economy at risk by some of the outrageous behavior that they were engaged in,” he said outside the White House. “[But] we are responsible, though.

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Senators want to fight Mexican drug cartels’ expanding influence

A bloody war between Mexican drug cartels is no longer solely a south-of-the-border problem, members of Congress said Tuesday at a hearing on the issue. The violence accompanying those battles has crept into the United States, and is believed to largely be fueled by money and guns pouring over the border from America, said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois.

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While the Giants Reel, Many Small Banks Are Thriving

Last fall, soon after congress decided it would spend $700 billion to shore up the nation’s flailing financial system, about 100 shareholders of Reunion Bank of Florida gathered for a party. Over crab fondue and London broil, they toasted the start of their spanking new bank

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GAO: Fake passports easy to get

A congressional investigation has exposed gaping holes in security eight years after the September 11 terrorist attacks, a government report says. An investigator used a false identification to obtain a U.S. passport and then used the passport to get an airline boarding pass and go through an airport security checkpoint, according to the Government Accountability Office

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