Michael Scherer

Michael Scherer is the White House correspondent for TIME. He previously worked for Salon.com, Mother Jones, and the Daily Hampshire Gazette. A native of San Francisco, he graduated from U.C. Santa Cruz and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

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Justice Samuel Alito, The Presidential Fact Checker

UPDATED BELOW: With a White House fact check of the apparent Alito fact check. Late last night, I wrote about Justice Alito’s apparent fact check of President Obama’s speech. During Obama’s description of the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision, Alito shook his and appeared to mouth the words “not true.” This morning, it appears that [...]

Justice Samuel Alito Objects To President Obama’s Supreme Court Criticism

The most surprising moment in the House Chamber Tuesday night came not from House Minority Leader John Boehner’s frequent gesticulation, but from the subtle exchange between Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and President Obama. It started when Obama offered a surprisingly blunt criticism of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that corporate and union money should [...]

Dueling SOTU Speech Excerpts

The following excerpts of Obama’s speech tonight were released by the White House. (Jon Ward over at the Daily Caller has excerpts from Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s response.)

Fiscal Responsibility and American Democracy, Like Oil And Water

Pop quiz: Name a candidate who has run for federal office in the last half century who did not promise voters either a tax cut or more government funding for services. (To make it harder: Name a winning candidate.) I can’t think of one, because everyone I have ever covered or read about promises either [...]

CIA Domestic Information Ops: The False News About Abu Zubaydah

In December of 2007, ABC News’ Brian Ross came out with big scoop: A “leader of the CIA team that captured the first major Al Qaeda figure, Abu Zubaydah,” appeared on camera to announce that the waterboarding of Zubaydah had worked. The story was quickly picked up by conservative pundits and other reporters, adding what [...]

FBI: Former Fake Pimp Tried To Bug Lady Senator

UPDATE: O’Keefe announced on January 29 that he was not trying to wiretap the phones, just test them. See his statement here. Remember James O’Keefe, the skinny white kid, who dressed as a cartoon pimp and exposed ACORN as a mess of an organization, rocketing himself to Fox News fame? Well he was just arrested [...]

Fox News: The Most Trusted Name In TV News

Really. According to Public Policy Polling, via Taegan Goddard: Americans do not trust the major tv news operations in the country- except for Fox News. Our newest survey looking at perceptions of ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and NBC News finds Fox as the only one that more people say they trust than [...]

Gimmick or No, President Obama Still Has Big Deficit Problems And A Dysfunctional Debate

On February 26, 2009, President Obama declared “A New Era of Responsibility” when he released his 2010 budget. Except it wasn’t. According to the president’s own bean counters’ calculations, the 2010 Obama budget left the U.S. economy with unsustainable deficits in the out-years, from roughly 2012 to 2019, even before the big boom in entitlement [...]

Don’t Ask For Definite Details About Don’t Tell, The Dance Continues

If only it was all as simple as “Yes,” the word that Robert Gibbs offered last year, in response to a question about whether or not President Obama would end the policy of banning gays and lesbians from openly serving in the military. Ever since that one word, the answer White House has grown, into [...]

For Those Who Want Even More Barack Obama: The iPhone App

Does the White House have to pay Steve Jobs royalties for this?