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Energy
Obama embraces natural gas exports to drive job growth despite likely domestic price hike
WASHINGTON TIMES
Dave Boyer and Ben Wolfgang
Tucked inside the White House’s latest economic report to Congress is a section on energy production, with President Obama’s top economic advisers embracing the concept of boosting natural gas exports as a driver of job growth, even as it would likely drive up prices paid by U.S. consumers and businesses.

Fuel-hauling trains could derail at 10 a year
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Matthew Brown and Josh Funk
The federal government predicts that trains hauling crude oil or ethanol will derail an average of 10 times a year over the next two decades, causing more than $4 billion in damage and possibly killing hundreds of people if an accident happens in a densely populated part of the U.S.

Obama Unveils Arctic Offshore Drilling Safety Rules
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Ben Geman
The Interior Department unveiled draft rules Friday aimed at preventing and containing oil spills in harsh Arctic waters off Alaska’s shores, where big energy companies including Royal Dutch Shell hope to tap potentially huge petroleum deposits. The long-awaited offshore-drilling rules are the latest of several federal policies governing the Arctic region’s environment unveiled in recent weeks, including a proposal to make the onshore Arctic National Wildlife Refuge permanently off-limits to drilling.

Obama’s Expected Keystone Pipeline Veto Is Likely to Be the First in a Wave
NEW YORK TIMES
Michael D. Shear and Coral Davenport
Wielding the weapon of his pen, President Obama this week is expected to formally reject a Republican attempt to force construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. But in stopping the transit of petroleum from the forests of Alberta to the Gulf Coast, Mr. Obama will be opening the veto era of his presidency. The expected Keystone veto, the third and most significant of Mr. Obama’s six years in office, would most likely be followed by presidential vetoes of bills that could emerge to make changes in the Affordable Care Act, impose new sanctions on Iran and roll back child nutrition standards, among others.

Technology
Internet Freedom Works
POLITICO
Commissioner Ajit Pai
For its part, the FCC is about to scrap a Clinton-era bipartisan consensus that the Internet should be free from intrusive government regulation. On Thursday, the agency will likely vote to impose rules upon almost every nut and bolt of the Internet, from the digital connection at your house to the core of the network. In so doing, it’ll dust off the heavy-handed monopoly rules designed for Ma Bell back in the 1930s.

From Internet to Obamanet
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Gordon Crovitz
Both ObamaCare and “Obamanet” submit huge industries to complex regulations. Their supporters say the new rules had to be passed before anyone could read them. But at least ObamaCare claimed it would solve long-standing problems. Obamanet promises to fix an Internet that isn’t broken.

Dem commissioner breaks silence on Internet rules
THE HILL
Mario Trujillo
Democratic Federal Communications Commission member Mignon Clyburn said she is “pleased” that the net neutrality order tracks closely to her prior recommendations.

Net neutrality: A lobbying bonanza
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Tony Romm
Whether you view net neutrality rules as a government takeover of the Internet or the only way to save the Web from corporate meddling, one thing is certain: The issue has been a boon to Washington lobbyists, lawyers and activists — and they’re poised to continue cashing in for years to come.

911’s deadly flaw: Lack of location data
USA TODAY
John Kelly and Brendan Keefe
Your chance of 911 getting a quick fix on location ranges from as low as 10% to as high as 95%, according to hundreds of pages of local, state and federal documents obtained and reviewed by USA TODAY and more than 40 Gannett newspapers and television stations across the country.

US telecoms executives turn on Dish’s Charlie Ergen
FINANCIAL TIMES (Subscribe)
David Crow
AT&T, the country’s second-largest mobile telecoms group, and T-Mobile US, the number four player, said it was unfair that the founder of Dish had been able to buy $13.3bn worth of spectrum because the company does not offer wireless services to consumers.

Secrecy around police surveillance equipment proves a case’s undoing
WASHINGTON POST
Ellen Nakashima
The StingRay is a box about the size of a small suitcase — there’s also a handheld version — that simulates a cellphone tower. It elicits signals from all mobile phones in its vicinity. That means it collects information not just about a criminal suspect’s communications but also about the communications of potentially hundreds of law-abiding citizens.

Finance
Fannie, Freddie Weak Earnings Raise Possibility of Future Bailouts
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Joe Light
The delay in reforming the nation’s housing-finance system, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac , is presenting policy makers with an uncomfortable reality: The terms of the bailout out of the mortgage-finance companies could eventually lead to the need for a new bailout.

Barack Obama advances rule hitting Wall Street, financial advisers
POLITICO
David Nather and Patrick Temple-West
President Barack Obama is pushing ahead with a hotly contested rule to require more financial advisers to provide only advice that’s in the best interests of their clients — a standard that’s sure to invite more conflict with business groups and Wall Street, but that will also solidify his support among Elizabeth Warren and other Democratic populists.

Lawmakers Clash Over Easing Rules for Smaller Banks
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Ryan Tracy
Prospects for legislation to ease rules on small banks are dimming amid rifts on Capitol Hill, underscoring the rocky road the industry faces in the new Republican-controlled Congress. Lawmakers, who have been receptive to arguments from small and midsize banks to reduce the regulatory burden of stress tests, mortgage restrictions and other new rules, are now at odds about how far to take those efforts.

As ‘Spoof’ Trading Persists, Regulators Clamp Down
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Bradley Hope
Over six hours, Igor Oystacher ’s computer sent roughly 23,000 commands, including thousands of buy and sell orders, according to correspondence from the exchange to his clearing firm reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. But he canceled many of those orders milliseconds after placing them, the documents show, in what the exchange alleges was part of a trading practice designed to trick other investors into buying and selling at artificially high or low prices. Traders call the illegal bluffing tactic “spoofing,” and they say it has long been used to manipulate prices of anything from stocks to bonds to futures. Exchanges and regulators have only recently begun clamping down.

The real middle-class challenge
WASHINGTON POST
Robert Samuelson
Given the obsession with economic inequality, you might think it’s the main force squeezing the middle class. It isn’t. We have this not from some right-wing think tank but from President Obama’s top economists. The bigger culprit, they show, is the slow growth of productivity — that messy process by which the economy improves efficiency and living standards. Greater inequality is a distant second in assaulting middle-class incomes.

Politics
10 most competitive Senate races in ’16
WASHINGTON POST
Chris Cillizza
But that initial reading of the numbers is slightly deceiving. Yes, Republicans such as Sen. Mark Kirk (Ill.) and Sen. Ron Johnson (Wis.) are in a tenuous position to win second terms. But beyond that, there are no races that today you would call 50-50. Sure, Pennsylvania is a Democratic state, but Sen. Patrick J. Toomey is an able candidate, and Democrats are down on the prospect of a rerun from former congressman Joe Sestak. Sens. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), Roy Blunt (Mo.), Rob Portman (Ohio), Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Richard Burr (N.C.) are all relatively young and have faced real races in the not-too-distant past. Yes, they sit in swing (or Democratic-leaning) states, but none of them are underdogs (or even close) yet.

Economic Recovery Under Obama Creates Quandaries for 2016 Race
NEW YORK TIMES
Jonathan Martin
But as both parties begin positioning themselves for the election to succeed Mr. Obama, the politics of the economy are far more complicated than the president would have them. Among Democrats, there are divisions over the degree to which Hillary Rodham Clinton, considered their leading contender, should praise the recovery and run on Mr. Obama’s stewardship of the economy. And Republicans — assessing falling unemployment and soaring job creation under a president with still-mediocre approval ratings — are grasping for the right way to frame their 2016 campaign message.

In Pre-Primary Pivot to Right, Walker Shifts Tone on Abortion
NEW YORK TIMES
Trip Gabriel
It was a memorable political ad: Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin spoke directly into the camera in a 30-second spot last fall and called abortion an “agonizing” decision. He described himself as pro-life but, borrowing the language of the abortion rights movement, pointed to legislation he signed that leaves “the final decision to a woman and her doctor.” That language was gone when Mr. Walker met privately with Iowa Republicans in a hotel conference room last month, according to a person who attended the meeting. There, he highlighted his early support for a “personhood amendment,” which defines life as beginning at conception and would effectively prohibit all abortions and some methods of birth control.

Homeland Security fight goes into crunch time
John Bresnahan and Burgess Everett
Late Monday afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will force the fourth vote in three weeks on a bill to fund the massive agency that protects Americans from terrorists, floods and incursions across the borders. Senate Democrats will almost certainly block it again. And after that, all of McConnell’s options become messy, with just four days left to avoid a partial government shutdown that some senior GOP lawmakers and aides now consider nearly unavoidable.

Congress split over ways to face Islamic State
WASHINGTON POST
Paul Kane
So far, the only real agreement is that Congress needs to play a more forceful role in the debate over foreign affairs. The Obama administration has found itself caught in a position of sounding the alarm about potential terrorist attacks — as Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson did Sunday, highlighting intelligence suggesting the possibility of attacks on shopping malls — but offering a war resolution that includes limits on the scope of battle against the Islamic State.