WASHINGTON - Almost from the day news broke that classified documents had turned up in the home and former office of President Biden, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has responded to questions about the matter by essentially not responding. "I would refer you to the White House Counsel's Office," she has said repeatedly. At Friday's press briefing, Jean-Pierre invoked the phrase or some variation of it eight times - including in response to a question about whether the White House has done an effective job communicating about the lingering controversy. As monotonous as it was, it wasn't even a record. A few days earlier, she fell back on the same response 25 times. On Wednesday, after FBI agents conducted a search of Biden's beach home, reporters repeatedly asked if the White House had been "transparent" about the investigation. "What should the public take away from the fact that you're keeping information like this from the public?" asked Associated Press … [Read more...] about Questioned on Biden documents, his press secretary has only one answer
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Book World: Two books capture the messy, monumental life of Ted Kennedy
Against the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Rise of Conservatism, 1976-2009 By Neal Gabler Crown. 1,227 pp. $45 - - - By John A. Farrell Penguin Press. 738 pp. $40 - - - In his 47 years in the United States Senate - from the high promise of his brother Jack's presidency to the hard slog of Barack Obama's first months in the White House - Edward M. Kennedy accomplished as much as anyone who ever served in that body. During that half-century, Kennedy's large extended family was at the center of a cascade of unimaginable tragedies, including his brothers' assassinations, his near-fatal plane crash, cancer diagnoses for two of his children, divorce, drug addiction, sex scandals and the premature deaths of several other relatives. Perhaps most important, Ted Kennedy emerged after his brother Robert's death in 1968 as the chief torchbearer of American liberalism, even as it came under attack from an insurgent political right. Kennedy's rich, dramatic, consequential life … [Read more...] about Book World: Two books capture the messy, monumental life of Ted Kennedy