The Fireside chat for April 10, 2010 (VIDEO)

With April 15th approaching, the President discusses several of the tax breaks for middle class families he has signed into law. Find out more about the Making Work Pay tax credit, breaks for first-time homebuyers, rewards for making your home more energy efficient and more through the Tax Savings Tool at WhiteHouse.gov.

Julian Bond destroys Gov. Bob McDonnell (VIDEO)

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Why not have a commemoration of Civil War Month, in which you talk about the valor, the honor of soldiers on both sides of the army?

Surely, the Union Soldiers were just as courageous, just as valorous, just as honorable as those who fought for the other side. Surely, they loved their families and homes and defended with the same compassion and interest.

But somehow or another, this blind allegiance to one side—in fact, to the losing side—to the only side bearing a flag which fought the United States and was defeated, but which is regularly displayed all over the United States. We don‘t see Japanese flags, German flags or the other flags of nations we‘ve fought and beat displayed around on the backs of trucks, on bumper stickers, but we see this flag, the battle flag of the Confederacy.

And, as I say, the NAACP, and I think many, many others, think it is time it stopped.

The President's all-so brief remarks at the White House Easter Prayer Breakfast (VIDEO)

The President also took a moment to express our collective condolences for those who died in the West Virginia Mine Explosion.

In regards to our Nuclear Force Posture...

I read Fred Kaplan at Slate all the time. I depend on Thomas Ricks for the whole picture: getting down into the details of why the Surge worked (the subject of his book, The Gamble), how the Israeli Army had to cancel a planned operation and the bizarre reason why, the possibility of Iraq falling apart in the near term and why we might need to stay longer (which I respectfully disagree with). In effect, I depend on him to make it complicated. I depend on Fred Kaplan to keep it simple. Fred usually takes the Military headline of the day, and breaks it down to be understood by any civilian.

He does it today with Obama's change of our Nuclear Force Doctrine:

The Pentagon released its Nuclear Posture Review today, and those seeking clarity from the major newspapers must have come away more confused than ever.

The New York Times, in a front-page preview of the report headlined "Obama to Limit Scenarios to Use Nuclear Weapon," called the president's new strategy "a sharp shift from those of his predecessors."

Yet the Wall Street Journal, titling its story "U.S. Keeps First-Strike Strategy," shrugged off the report as "a status-quo document" that makes "only modest changes."

Both stories exaggerate. The actual 49-page report is neither dramatic nor ho-hum. In a formal statement this morning, President Barack Obama said it takes "specific and concrete steps" that "reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national-security strategy."

That's the most that can be said for it, but that's hardly trivial.

Disarmament activists had hoped for more. But, like the single-payer advocates in the health care debate, they were fooling themselves if they expected it.

The big issue—a matter of suspense in arms-control circles—was whether the document would declare that deterring a nuclear attack is the "sole" purpose of nuclear weapons or merely their "primary" purpose.

If it was the "sole" purpose, that would mean the president was declaring that the United States would never use or threaten to use nuclear weapons except in response to a nuclear attack on U.S. or allied territory. It would signal a "no-first-use" policy.

If it was merely the "primary" purpose, that would mean the United States might use nukes in other circumstances, for instance in response to a chemical or biological attack or to a large-scale conventional invasion of an ally. We would, in other words, reserve the right to fire nuclear weapons first—as we have been doing, and declaring, since the atomic age began.

Obama's strategy carves out a novel, and very intriguing, chunk of middle ground. It rejects "no-first-use," noting that the United States is "not prepared at the present time to adopt a universal policy that deterring nuclear attack is the sole purpose of nuclear weapons."

However, it does declare that the United States will not fire nuclear weapons first at any country that has signed, and is in compliance with, the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The distinction may seem semantic, but in fact it's substantial. Throughout the Cold War and in the two decades since, presidents have always maintained a strategic ambiguity about when and whether they might use nuclear weapons. The commonly invoked phrase has been that "all options are on the table," sometimes with eyebrows raised while saying "all."

Obama is now saying that in conflicts with countries that don't have nuclear weapons and aren't cheating on the Non-Proliferation Treaty, all options are not on the table. We don't need to brandish, much less use, our nukes. We can launch sufficiently devastating attacks with conventional weapons and defend ourselves against whatever those countries might throw against us.

This declaration has three tangible effects. First, the nuclear war-planners at U.S. Strategic Command are, in effect, ordered to stop looking for targets in treaty-compliant countries—and to stop listing "requirements" for more nuclear weapons to hit those targets.

Second, it provides another incentive for countries—even unfriendly countries—not to develop nuclear weapons (if they believe the U.S. declaration, anyway).

Third, it further isolates those countries that are in violation of the NPT—which is to say, Iran and North Korea.

UPDATE: 4:58pm, Pacific: In case you're wondering, righties. He's another key graph:

...officials agreed that there were strategic reasons for preserving the first-use option under some circumstances against some potential foes. Second, Robert Einhorn, undersecretary of state for nuclear security, added, in the same phone conference, that several allies in Asia and Europe—who were consulted throughout the drafting process—said that they would find a no-first-use policy "very unsettling." The Cold War concept of the "nuclear umbrella"—in which the United States guarantees an ally's security by threatening to use nuclear weapons in its defense—is still alive.

The President fares far better in Basketball than in Baseball... (VIDEO)

From Saturday's Half-time show. The President starts off ice cold, then heats up...

It was high and outside... (VIDEO)

...if you're Andre the Giant.