Sequestration

Another member of the Washington political media stepped forward Thursday to claim he was threatened by the Obama White House, shortly after the White House denied reports that an adviser threatened famed Watergate journalist Bob Woodward. 

The latest claim comes from Lanny Davis, who served as counsel to former President Bill Clinton and later went on to write a column for The Washington Times.  In a radio interview on WMAL, Davis said that a "senior Obama White House official" once called his editor at the Times and said that if the paper continued to run his columns, "his reporters would lose their credentials." 

Davis said he "couldn't imagine why this call was made" since he's an Obama supporter. 

But he called the alleged threat "unfortunate". 

The account comes after Woodward claimed Wednesday night that a White House aide sent him an email saying he would "regret" his recent reporting on the sequester battle. 

House Speaker John Boehner had a simple message Wednesday for President Obama after he used the bully pulpit to blame Republicans for the "meat cleaver" of looming spending cuts: You created it, you fix it. 

"Having first proposed and demanded the sequester, it would make sense that the president lead the effort to replace it," Boehner wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. 

The "sequester" is the Washington word for the $85 billion in 2013 spending cuts set to hit starting March 1, with more than $1 trillion in cuts on tap over the next decade.  Boehner and Obama both agree that the federal budget needs that level of deficit reduction and more, but sharply disagree over how to achieve it.  In the absence of any compromise, the set of indiscriminate cuts which would hit the military hardest are set to take hold in less than two weeks.