Dan Pfeiffer, a top strategist for President Obama, visited a hospital twice last week with what officials describe as stroke-like symptoms, the White House confirmed to Post Politics.

Pfeiffer, 37, has since returned to work and is being monitored.

"We are happy and relieved to have Dan back at work full time," White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said. "He's feeling better, listening to his doctors, and focused on helping implement the president’s very full domestic and foreign policy agenda."

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Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) will write an op-ed for the Russian media outlet Pravda in response to Vladimir Putin's New York Times op-ed, McCain's office confirmed Friday.

"Sen. McCain is glad to take them up on the offer and will submit a piece," McCain spokesman Brian Rogers told Post Politics.

The news was first reported by Foreign Policy, which (somewhat unwittingly) facilitated the agreement.

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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry  (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

In an opening statement Tuesday before the House Armed Services Committee, Secretary of State John F. Kerry told lawmakers that they had effectively already voted for the use of force in Syria.

“You have already spoken to this. Your word is on the line, too. You passed the Syria Accountability Act," Kerry said. "And that act clearly states that Syria’s chemical weapons threaten the security of the Middle East. That’s in plain writing. It’s in the act. You voted for it. We’ve already decided that these chemical weapons are important to the security of our nation.”

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(Ria Novsoti/Kremlin/Reuters)

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) says in a new interview that Russian President Vladimir Putin, in the early 1990s, beat him in a drunken arm-wrestling match to decide who won the Cold War.

And no, that's not hyperbole.

Rohrabacher told KPCC-FM that Putin and two other Russian politicians were in Washington, D.C., and  Rohrabacher invited them to play touch football. They all wound up at a local bar — Kelly's Irish Times — afterward. But rather than summarize it all, we thought it best just to let Rohrabacher tell it:

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West Virginia Secretary of State  Natalie Tennant (D), shown in March 2011.(Brittany Erskine/ Associated Press)

West Virginia Secretary of State Natalie Tennant (D) is expected to announce next week that she will run for Senate, according to three people with knowledge of her plans.

Tennant is perhaps the last remaining big-name recruit for Democrats, who have struggled to find a standard-bearer for the seat held by retiring Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.).

She is expected to make her campaign official Tuesday, followed by stops in a few cities across the state.

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), in a new op-ed, takes issue with the Obama administration's claims that the threat of military force caused Syria's government to consider turning over its chemical weapons.

Instead, Paul writes, it was the opposition to military action in Syria — and the delay that it caused — that led to diplomatic progress.

"One thing is for certain: The chance for diplomacy would not have occurred without strong voices against an immediate bombing campaign," Paul wrote for the Washington Times. "If we had simply gone to war last week or the week before without asking any questions, as many advocated, we wouldn't be looking at a possible solution today."

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Former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and her husband, Mark Kelly, will headline a fall fundraiser for a leading Senate candidate, Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa), the congressman announced Friday.

Giffords and Kelly will attend Braley's ninth annual "Bruce, Blues, and BBQ" fundraiser on Oct. 27. The event will be held in Des Moines for the first time.

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New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) announced Friday that he won't endorse anyone in the New York mayor's race.

Bloomberg made the announcement on "The John Gambling Show."

"I don’t want to do anything that complicates it for the next mayor, and that’s one of the reasons I’ve decided I’m just not going to make an endorsement in the race," Bloomberg said.

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 Jeffrey Zients shown in February 2012. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

President Obama will announce Friday that his top White House economic adviser, Gene Sperling, will leave at the end of the year and be replaced by Obama’s former budget director, Jeff Zients, a White House official said.

National Economic Council director Gene Sperling, who also played that role in the Clinton administration, will be leaving so he can join his wife in California. He spent the first two years of Obama's first term as a senior adviser to then-Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and later moved to the White House, where he coordinates economic policy.

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Vice President Biden on Thursday blamed the "this sort of Neanderthal crowd" in the House for holding up the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.

"Did you ever think we'd be fighting over, you know, 17, 18 years later to reauthorize this?" he asked at an event commemorating the law's 19th anniversary, according to a pool report.

House Republicans split over the piece of legislation but eventually re-authorized it in February.

In talking about VAWA, Biden also said that he believes he knows more about the Senate than anyone who has ever served there.

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