White House Press Secretary Jay Carney tried to change the order in which reporters could question him today, but the press corps whacked him for passing over a scheduled question from a female journalist.
The briefing halted momentarily when someone suggested that Carney planned to "call on the boys [first]" before taking a question from CBS's Norah O'Donnell, whose turn it was to question Carney. The press corps consensus seemed to be that Carney is free to break with the standard order of taking questions from reporters, but he should do so from the outset.
"Fair enough," Carney said before returning to O'Donnell, who asked if President Obama would accept House Speaker John Boehner's demand that any debt ceiling increase be matched by equivalent cuts in spending.
Effectively, Carney said he wouldn't. "The president does not believe that the full faith and credit of the united states . . . should be held hostage to a political ideology," Carney said.
