Much To Do, Congress Faces Nov. Elections Deadline

After a five-week recess, Congress is back at work in the last legislative session before midterm elections in four weeks. Reams of bills await attention — including more than 300 measures from the House that the Senate has so far shelved — and President Obama is pressing for small-business tax breaks. How much will lawmakers — who won't want to alienate voters ahead of elections — get done? Most experts agree: not much.

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Could Panic Have Been Prevented?

Robert Samuelson, NewsweekWASHINGTON -- It's been two years since Lehman Brothers failed (Sept. 15, 2008), and we still can't conclusively answer this question: What if the government had saved Lehman? Its bankruptcy was pivotal. Until then, deteriorating housing and mortgage markets had triggered what seemed a serious -- but not unprecedented -- recession. Once Lehman failed, the economy went into a frenzied free fall. It's hard not to wonder whether some of the ensuing turmoil could have been avoided. Consider what happened after Lehman: Receive news alerts-- Credit tightened. Banks wouldn't lend...

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Opinion: The lesson of September 12

Editor's note: CNN Contributor Bob Greene is a bestselling author whose books include "Late Edition: A Love Story" and "Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War."

(CNN) -- September 12 is always the day that reminds us that the war may never end.

September 11, each year, is the day for somber commemoration and prayers for those who were lost. September 11 is the date that lives in history.

But as each September 12 dawns -- this year on Sunday -- we realize anew that the uncertain slog continues, that the year ahead will be one in which unseen and hazily defined enemies continue to wish ill on a United States that, in 2001, dedicated itself to a war on terror.

Most wars eventually come to a close.

This one, by its very nature, will not.

One evening in the weeks after September 11, 2001, I was having dinner with John Glenn. There is no American who has had the life that G lenn has: a World War II Marine fighter pilot who flew 59 combat missions, and who then returned to the skies in the Korean War to fly 90 more; the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth and the greatest national hero of his era; a United States senator for 24 years; at age 77 the oldest man ever to leave the Earth's bounds as he returned to space aboard the shuttle Discovery.

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, with an injured and angry country hungry for retaliation and victory, Glenn, who had turned 80, was realizing something before most people did.

"All the other wars we had," he said, "the object was to win the battlefield. Use tanks, use planes, take their capital, and declare victory. War's over.

"But this. . .this is like the wind. This is like fighting the wind. . . .You can hit them, but they'll pop up somewhere else. This doesn't seem to be the kind of war where you can look forward to them signing a surrender on the battleshi p Missouri."

He was referring to the end of World War II. Amer ica's involvement in that war began on December 7, 1941, and ended less than four years later on the September day in 1945 when Japan signed its surrender aboard the Missouri in Tokyo Bay. By the ninth anniversary of the beginning of World War II, the victory had long since been won; the surviving soldiers were home and raising families; the terrible times were all past tense.

Nine years after the war on terror began, though, there is no end in sight, and even if there was, who exactly could sign a surrender? In the first days of the war on terror, then-U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, perhaps inadvertently, put his finger on it. Speaking to reporters, he said:

"I've therefore characterized this conflict, this campaign, this so-called war, as being notably different from others."

This so-called war. Nine years ago the country went into what we were told was wartime footing. But unless you were a member of a family with a son or daughter, a fa ther or mother, a brother or sister serving in the military, here at home it wasn't always easy to figure out precisely what that entailed.

Nine years ago, the National Guard moved into U.S. airports when the terminals finally reopened to passengers; the Guard's saturation presence ended soon enough.

Curbside baggage check-in was done away with because federal officials believed it provided an opportunity for terrorists; that decision, too, was soon reversed as the airlines complained that it was hurting their business. The nation seemed uncertain of the appropriate rules in this new kind of war. It is largely forgotten now, but there were serious suggestions that salad bars be shut down because they were convenient targets for terrorists wanting to poison the citizenry.

For a while a phrase from World War II -- "for the duration" -- re-entered the language, but that, too, soon disappeared when it became evident that the duration would most likely have no endpoint.

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Obama Should Overhaul His Inner Circle

Toby Harnden, Daily TelegraphBarack Obama's presidency is on a glide path towards disaster. He can continue on the same trajectory and hit the mountain or he can give some new people a chance to take the controls. It might not work, but he needs to try it.He has an opportunity, sent not by heaven but by Chicago. Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, is poised to quit and run for the job he has made clear he always wanted – mayor of the Windy City.

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