Ryan Grim writes in today's Politico that anti-war groups are in full retreat after a series of devastating legislative battles in 2007.  After repeatedly failing to block funding for our troops despite spending millions on the effort, these liberal groups are now setting their sights lower and re-aligning expectations.  But while they are no longer targeting budget bills as strongly, these liberal groups aren’t giving up – their new tactic is to try to subject the President to Congressional approval on many actions relating to Iraq. 

“There was a consensus that last year was not productive,” John Isaacs, executive director of Council for a Livable World, said of a meeting attended by a coalition of anti-war groups last week. “Our expectations were dashed.”

Additionally, John Donnelly writes in CQ that leading Democrats are pushing to require President Bush to seek permission from Congress before entering into any long-term agreements with Iraq.  It’s unfortunate that the one thing Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama can agree on is tying the hands of the President to conduct international diplomacy with a nation who we are intrinsically tied to as Iraq.  As one State Department official put it, “You don’t need to go to Congress to receive a promise from a foreign government.”

In the Democratic presidential debate this week, Hillary Rodham Clinton offered Barack Obama a deal: Work with me to make sure Congress gets to approve any deals President Bush signs with Iraq setting terms for the two countries’ relationship, including any commitment of U.S. military forces.

Obama smiled and said, “Well, I think we can work on this, Hillary.”

In that moment, the leading Democratic contenders for the White House made it clear that their party would make an issue of the administration’s plans to sign a broad agreement with Iraq that would define, among other things, U.S. security commitments to that country. And the two candidates’ involvement in the issue — and their apparent agreement on it — guarantee that it will become a campaign issue through the primary season and into the general election.

Beyond that, though, it also suggests a brewing clash between the legislative and executive branches over the scope and nature of the U.S. engagement in Iraq in the years ahead. The White House maintains that it does not need a congressional sign-off for such an accord. The Democrats, citing several major precedents, have made it clear that they disagree.

Clinton, of New York, introduced a bill (S 2426) in ¬December that would effectively compel the administration to send any agreement to the Senate as a treaty. In the House, Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., filed a similar measure (HR 4959) on Jan. 15.

Today's Wall Street Journal publishes a commentary by Albert Brooks about what he argues is the intolerance of liberals.

Some might argue that this is simply a reflection of the current political climate, which is influenced by strong feelings about the current occupants of the White House. And sure enough, those on the extreme left give President Bush an average temperature of 15 and Vice President Cheney a 16. Sixty percent of this group gives both men the absolute lowest score: zero.

To put this into perspective, note that even Saddam Hussein (when he was still among the living) got an average score of eight from Americans. The data tell us that, for six in ten on the hard left in America today, literally nobody in the entire world can be worse than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

This doesn't sound very tolerant to me -- nor especially rational, for that matter. To be fair, though, let's roll back to a time when the far right was accused of temporary insanity: the late Clinton years, when right-wing pundits practically proclaimed the end of Western civilization each night on cable television because President Clinton had been exposed as a perjurious adulterer.

In 1998, Bill Clinton and Al Gore were hardly popular among conservatives. Still, in the 1998 ANES survey, Messrs. Clinton and Gore both received a perfectly-respectable average temperature of 45 from those who called themselves extremely conservative. While 28% of the far right gave Clinton a temperature of zero, Gore got a zero from just 10%. The bottom line is that there is simply no comparison between the current hatred the extreme left has for Messrs. Bush and Cheney, and the hostility the extreme right had for Messrs. Clinton and Gore in the late 1990s.

Does this refute the stereotype that right-wingers are "haters" while left-wingers are not? Liberals will say that the comparison is unfair, because Mr. Bush is so much worse than Mr. Clinton ever was. Yes, Mr. Clinton may have been imperfect, but Mr. Bush -- whom people on the far left routinely compare to Hitler -- is evil. This of course destroys the liberal stereotype even more eloquently than the data. The very essence of intolerance is to dehumanize the people with whom you disagree by asserting that they are not just wrong, but wicked.

In the end, we have to face the fact that political intolerance in America -- ugly and unfortunate on either side of the political aisle -- is to be found more on the left than it is on the right. This may not square with the moral vanity of progressive political stereotypes, but it's true.

Julie Appleby of USA Today outlines business concerns with a plan in San Francisco to require employers to provide health benefits to their workers.  The city is mandating that businesses spend a certain dollar amount on each employee's health care, regardless if employers currently offer benefits that are acceptable to employees and affordable to the bottom line.  Many companies are complaining that to comply with the new law, they will need to hire more administrative staff to track costs ensure compliance, while firing current employees who contribute to the profitability of the business.  As one small restaurant owner said, in order to comply, "I would have to hire a new accountant and fire a few cooks."