Trade bill now a tossup . . . Hours before one of the most consequential votes of President Barack Obama’s second term — whether to give him fast-track trade powers to clinch a sprawling Pacific Rim trade deal — Democrats and Republicans have no idea whether the votes are there to pass it. What they do know is that pockets of opposition from every corner of the House of Representatives has thrown the package into serious jeopardy. Politico

Obama is making a rare trip to Capitol Hill Friday morning to try to convince Democrats to support the bill. He also materialized Thursday night at the annual Congressional softball game to hang out with lawmakers, whom he usually just ignores.

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Kerry to rise from the bed . . . Drunk on painkillers, Secretary of State John Kerry will leap from his hospital bed sometime this month and head to Europe to negotiate the end of Western civilization by handing a nuclear weapon to medieval lunatics. White House Dossier
 

Union: Hackers to all government workers' data . . . A major union says the cyber theft of employee information is more damaging than it first appeared, asserting that hackers stole personnel data and Social Security numbers for 4 million current and former federal workers. The Obama administration had acknowledged that up to 4 million current and former employees whose information resides in the Office of Personnel Management server are affected by the December cyber breach, but it had been vague about exactly what was taken. Associated Press

Kerry to rise from the bed . . . Drunk on painkillers, Secretary of State John Kerry will leap from his hospital bed sometime this month and head to Europe to negotiate the end of Western civilization by handing a nuclear weapon to medieval lunatics. White House Dossier

Top proliferation expert questions State Dept. Iran claims . . . A leading nuclear weapons proliferation expert is questioning the Obama administration’s claim that Iran can meet its enriched nuclear fuel limit required under the Joint Plan of Action (JPA), saying the administration may have to allow a weaker standard that could threaten its requirement that Iran have at least a one-year breakout time to a nuclear weapon. White House Dossier

Hillary to announce Saturday with a focus on her mother . . . After nearly two and a half decades in the glare of the public spotlight, Hillary Clinton will reintroduce herself on Saturday by highlighting her personal journey marked heavily by the deprivations faced by her own mother. Starting with the story of her mother’s abusive and traumatic childhood, Clinton will explain the role her family played in making her an advocate for other people, campaign officials told POLITICO, previewing the highly touted speech on New York’s Roosevelt Island that will set the tone for the rest of her campaign. Chelsea and Bill Clinton will attend, but Bill Clinton will have no speaking role. Politico

Clinton venue choice of Roosevelt Island panned . . . "I can't think of an area in the five boroughs of New York City that's harder to get to," Flip Pidot, a Republican strategist, said. The island is generally accessible by one bus line and one subway stop, which is six flights below street level. The only other ways to reach the two-mile-long island are by car on a small, double-lane bridge or the tram system from the Upper East Side that runs about every 10 minutes. Pidot said Clinton should be glad she's got New York state locked down, "because she's going to make a lot of residents very angry." Fox News

Strauss-Kahn not a pimp . . . A French court has acquitted former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn of procuring prostitutes for sex parties in France, Belgium and the US. Mr Strauss-Kahn stood alongside 13 co-defendants, most of whom were also acquitted of "aggravated pimping". He has always denied knowing that some of the women who took part in orgies he attended were prostitutes. BBC

Aggravated pimping?

Judge rules family has no right to Nazi-seized painting . . . A federal judge in California has dealt a blow to a Jewish family's prolonged battle to regain ownership of a masterpiece painting seized from a woman fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939 and now on display in a museum in Spain. Judge John Walter found that under Spanish law, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid is the rightful owner of 'Rue Saint-Honore, Apres-midi, Effet de Pluie,' an 1897 masterpiece by Camille Pissarro depicting a Parisian street scene. Daily Mail

NAACP leader faked being black . . . An NAACP leader's parents have made a startling revelation: their daughter, for years a highly visible civil rights activist in Eastern Washington, is white. Rachel Dolezal, Spokane's NAACP Chapter President and part-time Africana Studies professor at Eastern Washington University, has been misleading people about her ethnicity for years, her parents say. Daily Mail

Trophies for losers . . . Americans today, and especially young Americans, think much more highly of themselves yet know much less about the world around them than previous generations, according to a panel at the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday afternoon. Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, discussed how members of the millennial generation view themselves. “We do have more individualism, more focus on the self,” Twenge said. However, this individualism is different than past forms of individualism that were more rugged and self-supporting, she argued. Washington Free Beacon

Anti-Semiticism rampant at California universities . . . Anti-Jewish agitprop has been appearing with alarming frequency on the prestigious, taxpayer-funded campuses of the University of California (UC) system this academic year. “Unfortunately, anti-Semitism has become fashionable again,” said Joseph Potasnik, a rabbi and the executive vice president for the New York Board of Rabbis. Daily Caller

Escapee Richard Matt: Brutal, charismatic, evil and smart . . . “You can never have enough security with him,” one police officer said of Richard Matt, one of the convicts who escaped from a maximum-security prison in upstate New York last weekend. “You can never trust him. You can never turn your back on him.” Washington Post

Keith Koffler
Editor
White House Dossier

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