Nation Briefly

Walter Reed Army hospital in Washington to close

WASHINGTON (AP) - Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the Army's flagship hospital where privates to presidents have gone for care, is closing its doors after more than a century.

Hundreds of thousands of the nation's war wounded from World War I to today have received treatment at Walter Reed, including 18,000 troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

President Dwight Eisenhower died there. So did Gens. John J. Pershing and Douglas MacArthur.

It's where countless celebrities, from Bob Hope to quarterback Tom Brady, have stopped to show their respect to the wounded. Through the use of medical diplomacy, the center also has tended to foreign leaders.

The storied hospital, which opened in 1909, was scarred by a 2007 scandal about substandard living conditions on its grounds for wounded troops in outpatient care and the red tape they faced. It led to improved care for the wounded, at Walter Reed and throughout the military. By then, however, plans were moving forward to close Walter Reed's campus.

Ronald Reagan's legacy claimed by both parties

WASHINGTON (AP) - Ronald Reagan might as well be sitting in on the troubled debt talks, so frequently is his memory invoked by both sides. But for vastly different reasons. Conservative Republicans praise the 40th president's steely advocacy for smaller government and lower taxes.

President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies praise Reagan because, they say, he was the sublime compromiser, willing to work with Democrats such as House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill of Massachusetts to forge landmark tax and Social Security deals and willing to raise the federal debt ceiling so the government could keep borrowing to pay its bills.

Can both be true?

In fact, both camps are experiencing a touch of Reagan amnesia.

Debt talks between Obama and House Speaker John Boehner came to a grinding halt Friday night when Boehner abruptly broke them off, raising new uncertainties that a deal could be struck to avert a threatened government default.