Obama's Q-and-A session today with the House GOP members, meeting in Baltimore, as shown on C-Span. Program info here; embedded player below. Good-government types often moan that the U.S. should have some equivalent to the lively "Prime Minister's Question Time" from Westminster. This is quite a worthy counterpart. And, not incidentally from the White House's point of view, perhaps the most effective performance by Obama since taking office.

[Housekeeping update: The clip I originally embedded here was to the full 86-minute session. That started crashing, presumably because of limits on the C-Span servers. The embed-link has subsequently been disabled. I then embedded another clip -- but that proves to be only to a couple-minute highlight reel. So if you go to the main C-Span program page, here or here, you'll be able to watch the full broadcast. Thanks to reader J. Stein for tip about the embed problem.] [Update-update: Again via J Stein and Salon, an embedded MSNBC link to the Q-and-A part of the program. The time counts in the paragraph below apply to the C-Span version, not this. Interesting nonetheless. Starts with a bracing exchange on deficits, stimulus, taxes.]

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He starts moving out of mere opening-remarks mode at about time 7:00; more fully so by around 9:30, followed by a few minutes of re-explaining his health and economic problems; a plea for a different approach to governing starting around 17:30; and then the Q-and-A for real starting around 19:30. Too many highlights after that to mention. But, as a sample, check the exchange starting around 31:00.