Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said she and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had a “long conversation” about policy when the two met last month — and that Mr. Biden had called her twice.

“He called,” she told the Boston Globe Wednesday. “Actually called me twice … and invited me down; we had lunch.”

“And we talked about policy. We talked about what’s happening to America’s middle class,” she said. “We talked about the direction that this country has been going in. We talked about the capture of this country by those who have got money and power.”

Valerie Jarrett says she plans on staying in the White House until the end of President Barack Obama’s term.
In an interview with The New York Times Magazine published Friday, the president’s senior adviser discussed politics and policy and made clear that she wants to stick around until Jan. 20, 2017.
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“Oh, my goodness, I intend to stay until the lights go off,” Jarrett said. “Why would I miss a single second of this?”

At the top of the wish list for America’s mayors: an urban agenda from Washington.

A bipartisan group of more than 200 mayors from across the country visited Washington, D.C., last week for the United States Conference of Mayors’ winter meeting. The mayors were in town to meet with President Barack Obama, White House officials and members of Congress about the issues facing their municipalities, but their broader complaint was the lack of a cohesive, political agenda from Washington aimed at boosting urban areas.

Shifting stances and a lack of clear standards from the governors of New York and New Jersey over their Ebola quarantine policy left critics and even some allies questioning on Monday whether the two men had fully worked through the details before they announced it.

In New York, local health officials said on Monday that they had not yet received any details of the three-day-old Ebola quarantine policy they are charged with enforcing.

In New Jersey, requests for such specifics were met with six sentences from a Friday news release.

An ongoing behind-the-scenes skirmish between the White House and state governors on how best to handle Ebola cases is becoming even more convoluted as several states announce they are following New York and New Jersey in ordering quarantines and other precautions that go well beyond federal guidelines -- and run contrary to Obama administration recommendations.

If you like an election campaign in which the candidates offer detailed policy plans explaining how they propose to address the nation’s basic budget and entitlement challenges—well, this hasn’t been the election year for you.