"My Secretary of State" by Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times
"Our allies are not what they used to be and neither are our enemies, who are less superpowers and more superempowered angry men and women. A lot of countries will need to go back to the blackboard, back to the basics of human capacity building, before they can partner with us on anything. So while we’re not likely to shift our secretary of education to secretary of state, let’s at least understand why it is not such a preposterous idea."
"Grover Norquist: No GOP fingerprints on fiscal cliff tax hikes" by Kate Nocera, POLITICO
"Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist said Wednesday Republicans need to have “credible” separation from any tax hike as part of a deal to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff — in order to make a case to voters in 2014 and 2016 that their vision is distinct from that of Democrats."
"U.S. bans BP from new government contracts after oil spill deal" by By Roberta Rampton, Reuters
"The U.S. government temporarily banned BP Plc from federal contracts on Wednesday over its "lack of business integrity" in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, a move that the British company had said could force it to rethink its entire U.S. operations."
"Taxing the rich remains popular" by Jon Cohen, Peyton M. Craighill and Aaron Blake; The Washington Post
"Sixty percent of all Americans back higher taxes on higher incomes in the new Post-ABC data."
"House Republicans choose all-white, all-male committee chairs” by Morgan Whitaker, “PoliticsNation”
“House Speaker John Boehner announced the chairs of most major House committees for the 113th Congress on Tuesday, and all 19 of them are white males, prompting many Democratic lawmakers to ask, ‘Where are the women?’”