Ten Words from The New York Times - Apr. 10, 2013

But for the first time he has included changes to Medicare and Social Security intended to entice Republicans back to the bargaining table.

While Republican leaders in Congress spurned Mr. Obama’s intended overture after early reports late last week, rejecting further tax increases on the wealthy and calling the spending cuts too small, Mr. Obama is hoping that rank-and-file Republican senators can be persuaded to join with him and Senate Democrats in a compromise.

Mr. Obama incorporated the compromise offers on Social Security and Medicare into his annual budget for the first time – over vehement objections from many Democrats – in part after earlier private discussions with individual Republican senators about what he could do to assure them of his seriousness about reaching a long-term deal to stabilize the national debt.

The 10-year budget plan would cut spending by about $1.2 billion over that time to replace the indiscriminate across-the-board cuts, known as sequestration, that took effect March 1 when Mr. Obama and Republican leaders failed to agree on alternative deficit-reduction measures.

“There’s not very much ambivalence on Capitol Hill about the gun issue,” Mr. Isakson said.

Further, while many members will still resist any new legislation, some Republicans may be harder pressed to stand against a measure with Mr. Toomey’s imprimatur.

“If it is an infringement on Second Amendment rights, many of us would want to block it.”

In one of the most significant gifts in the history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the philanthropist and cosmetics tycoon Leonard A. Lauder has promised the institution his collection of 78 Cubist paintings, drawings and sculptures.

Scholars say the collection is among the world’s greatest, as good as, if not better than, the renowned Cubist paintings, drawings and sculptures in institutions like the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the Pompidou Center in Paris.

In a 2010 review of an exhibition of the Met’s Picasso collection, Holland Cotter noted in The New York Times, “When the Museum of Modern Art was wolfing down audacious helpings of Cubism, the Met was content with a tasting menu of Blue Period, Rose Period and neo-Classical fare.”