Most of the interesting news today was generated by a presidential press conference —

Obama Promises to Try Closing Guantánamo Again

Obama cautions against rush to action in Syria

Permission Structure: Getting deals done with congressional Republicans

Elsewhere: Jonathan Chait has a critique of a David Brooks column. I don’t have the strength to make it through a Brooks column today, but Chait says —

The latest offensive, or counter-offensive, in the passive-aggressive Cold War between David Brooks and Paul Krugman has taken the form of an entire Brooks column not very subtly lambasting Krugman as a tired partisan hack while justifying his own work as thoughtful, elevated, and intellectually independent. It’s unfortunately muddled and self-serving in a way that obscures some pretty important questions about how political commentators ought to do their job.

If Chait’s description is accurate, Brooks may have produced one of the purest samples of distilled bullshit of all time.