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President Barack Obama said he's "embarrassed" for the 47 Republican senators who tried to undercut nuclear talks with Iran by writing a letter directly to the Iranian leadership.

"For them to address a letter to the Ayatollah, who they claim is our mortal enemy, and their basic argument to them is, 'Don't deal with our president because you can't trust him to follow through on an agreement,' that's close to unprecedented," Obama said in an interview with Vice News.

The youth-oriented news outlet released an excerpt of the interview on Friday. The full conversation is to be released Monday.

The GOP letter was also fodder for Obama's late-night appearance Thursday on ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live! Kimmel joked that 47 senators had warned him not to make any deals with Obama, whom he joked was "the first Kenyan-born Muslim socialist" elected president.

Obama used the Kimmel appearance to also weigh in on Wednesday's shooting of two police officers in Ferguson, Mo., saying while the pattern of racial discrimination in the St. Louis suburb was "worthy of protest," it was "no excuse for criminal acts."

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the officers and their families," Obama said. "Thankfully, they're OK."

Kimmel quizzed the president about UFOs, daylight savings time, and the comedian's pet peeve of overly long receipts dispensed by CVS drugstores. Most of the interview focused on the smaller details of life at the White House.

Obama confessed that it's been some time since he cooked for himself. And he complained the Secret Service doesn't allow him to drive.

"Is that because you don't have a birth certificate?" Kimmel asked.

"In Kenya, we drive on the other side of the road," Obama joked.

The interview also tiptoed into the controversy over Hillary Clinton's reliance of a private email account during her time as secretary of state.

The president said he still uses a government-issued Blackberry for his email. And he declined to share Clinton's personal address.

"I don't think she'd want you to have it, frankly," Obama told Kimmel.

The president said he doesn't text and rarely Tweets. But he played along with Kimmel's regular "Mean Tweets" feature and read aloud several written about him, as R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts" played softly in the background.

"Is there any way we could fly Obama to some golf course halfway around the world and just leave him there?" Obama read.

He quipped back, "Well, RW Surfer Girl, I think that's a great idea."

He seemed taken with this one: "How do you make Obama's eyes light up? Shine a flashlight in his ears." He laughed and said, "That's pretty good."

In the end, Obama told Kimmel the Tweets weren't all that mean. After all, he said, "You should see what the Senate says about me."

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Many are calling it the second battle over Waterloo — and this time, France won: A two-euro coin commemorating the bicentennial of Napoleon Bonaparte's defeat will not be widely released, after French objections over what it called a "negative symbol."

From Brussels, Teri Schultz reports for NPR:

"Belgian authorities say France complained to the European Union about plans to circulate a commemorative two-euro coin depicting the battlefield where Napoleon was defeated in 1815 by Britain and its allies, including the countries that are now Belgium and the Netherlands.

"The French wrote a letter saying such an image could hurt the coherence of the eurozone by offending French citizens."

"The National Union of Public Services, which is responsible for the coin, is angry. In a statement, it says it would be irresponsible to cancel the project when the Belgian Royal Mint has already manufactured 180,000 of the coins, with the project costing more than $2.5 million. And, the union says, France is selling its own coins commemorating Waterloo — so it doesn't want Belgium to admit defeat."

Like other members of the eurozone, Belgium designs and issues its own coins; only paper currency is under central control in the economic union. The proposed design features a lion, evoking the Lion's Mound monument at the historic battlefield that's south of Brussels.

"But Paris objected," reports French news site RFI, "saying that there would be an 'unfavourable reaction in France' and that 'the Battle of Waterloo has a particular resonance in the collective consciousness that goes beyond a simple military conflict.'"

Belgian website Flanders News spoke to several visitors to Waterloo, where reenactments are held each June to mark the battle's anniversary.

A British tourist tells the site he understands France's reaction — but he adds, "It's 200 years ago. They need to move on."

"As far as I'm concerned, they can issue 10 coins," a Dutch visitor says. "But I can imagine that that will not be beneficial for mutual understanding in Europe."

Instead of forcing the issue to be voted on by the European Council of Ministers, Belgian officials have decided that they'll issue the existing coins only as a commemorative items, aimed at collectors.

As for the official Belgian response, RFI quotes a statement from Belgian Finance Minister Johan Van Overtveldt, who said, "I am a bit surprised by all this agitation."

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This week, Wisconsin became the nation's 25th right-to-work state. It passed a law saying workers cannot be forced to join labor unions, or pay union dues, to keep a job.

There's a concerted effort in many states to pass laws that would weaken the power of labor unions. But unions and their allies are also fighting back in many places.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker became a Republican political star by taking on his state's public employee unions. This week he went a step further, signing a bill that would weaken private-sector unions.

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"Wisconsin now has the freedom to work," Walker said. "That is one more powerful tool as we help create not just jobs but career opportunities for many years to come."

Right-to-work laws have been on the wish list of business and industry groups for many years. But the political power of labor unions made them hard to pass outside the South and Mountain West. The recent sweeping Republican victories in statehouses across the country have extended such laws into the Rust Belt. Two years ago, Michigan and Indiana became right-to-work states.

"Since then we've seen a lot more activity on this issue in general, so we do think momentum is building and that Wisconsin is only going to add to that," said Patrick Semmens, a spokesman for the National Right to Work Committee.

This year, right-to-work laws were introduced in such diverse states as Maine, West Virginia, Missouri and New Mexico. Eric Hauser of the AFL-CIO says the effort to pass such laws has been fueled by outside conservative groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council.

"There is a purposeful, concentrated, raw political campaign underway by the right wing, with billions of dollars behind it, that is looking for any opportunity it can to attack workers," Hauser says.

The labor movement and its Democratic allies have managed to fend off the proposed laws in many places — at least so far this year. Right-to-work laws have been stalled in committee or left to die in places such as Missouri and West Virginia.

Gary Chaison, a professor of labor relations at Clark University, says unions still have the right to organize under federal law — even in right-to-work states. But if they can't require workers to pay dues, the benefits are diminished. And the unions will have less political power than they once did.

"A few years ago anyone running for public office, a governor for instance, would curry favor with the unions and ask for their endorsement," Chaison says. "Now they win their elections by opposing unions and fighting the unions."

He says the passage of right-to-work laws in state houses should be a warning sign for labor.

"They have a tremendous symbolic importance because right-to-work laws are usually passed in states where unions have minimum influence, and what we're seeing now is Wisconsin [and] Michigan are becoming states where unions have very little power," Chaison says.

Union leaders point out these defeats have been offset by victories elsewhere — like the passage of laws mandating paid sick leave and higher minimum wages. They say these wins suggest underlying public support for labor's goals.

But labor remains a lot weaker than it once was and in the wake of the recent electoral gains by Republicans, the opposition it faces has only grown more energized.

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Forty-seven Senate Republicans signed a letter to Tehran's leaders Monday questioning the authority of any agreement Iran might sign with President Barack Obama that is not ratified by Congress. And it's becoming an issue in the 2016 presidential campaign with potential Republican candidates signing onto the letter.

Tom Cotton, the freshman Arkansas senator behind the letter, even Tweeted a Farsi translation directly to the Iranian president and foreign minister.

.@HassanRouhani also, in case you need a translation... http://t.co/NVWL4PSFi1 pic.twitter.com/Je1ZBu1Cfp

— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) March 9, 2015

The move has enraged Democrats. The hashtag #47traitors was trending on Twitter, and a petition to charge the senators as being in violation of the Logan Act has gotten more than the required 100,000 signatures for the White House to respond.

(By Thursday morning, it had more than 200,000 signatures. The White House, however, is likely to defer to the Department of Justice as it routinely does with petitions calling for legal action. See that Justin Bieber petition.)

The letter also comes a week after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress about his reservations on a potential nuclear deal with Iran.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a likely 2016 contender, co-sponsored the prime minister's invitation and signed onto the letter to Iran, though he later denied in an interview with NBC's Today that he was trying to undermine the president in negotiating with Iran. Instead, he said he was actually trying "to strengthen the president's hand."

Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, leading early Republican primary polls, also expressed support for the senators.

.@marcorubio PAC looks to raise money off Iran letter. "Marco was proud to be one of the first senators to sign." pic.twitter.com/3mxhprf085

— Alex Leary (@learyreports) March 11, 2015

"The Senators are reacting to reports of a bad deal that will likely enable Iran to become a nuclear state over time," Bush said in a statement. "They would not have been put in this position had the Administration consulted regularly with them rather than ignoring their input."

Wisconsin Gov. Walker stressed that the president should seek congressional authorization.

"Unless the White House is prepared to submit the Iran deal it negotiates for congressional approval, the next president should not be bound by it," Walker said in his statement.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida — who got into a heated back and forth with Secretary of State John Kerry Wednesday during a congressional hearing about Iran and fighting the so-called Islamic State – signed onto the letter. In a fundraising email, his PAC highlighted that he was "proud to be one of the first senators to sign."

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal signed onto the letter after it was released.

I support the letter sent by @SenTomCotton & his colleagues to Iran warning them that Congress will have to approve any nuclear deal.

— Gov. Bobby Jindal (@BobbyJindal) March 10, 2015

Texas Gov. Rick Perry also said he "would be proud and honored to sign the letter." Perry linked to his video on Facebook about the nuclear threat Iran poses:

Jindal went a step further, saying anyone running for president "should sign on."

Post by Rick Perry.

"Every single person thinking about running for president, on both sides, should sign on to this letter to make clear to Iran that they are negotiating with a lame-duck president," Jindal said in a statement. "Make no mistake, any Iran deal that President Obama makes is not binding on a future president."

Of course, not every presidential contender agrees.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressed the letter Monday at the beginning of a news conference designed to put aside a controversy of her own about a different form of written communication.

"Either these senators were trying to be helpful to the Iranians or harmful to the Commander-In-Chief in the midst of high-stakes international diplomacy," Clinton insisted. "Either answer does discredit to the letters' signatories."

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is likely to challenge Clinton, expressed his outrage on Facebook:

Vice President Biden, who's unlikely to run if Clinton does, is a longtime former member of the Senate, and called the letter "beneath the dignity of an institution I revere."

Post by Bernie Sanders.

The current officer holder, President Obama, hit back hard at Republicans Monday.

"It's somewhat ironic to see some members of Congress wanting to make common cause with the hardliners in Iran," Obama said of an open letter from Republicans who have questioned the prospect of a nuclear agreement. "It's an unusual coalition."

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