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New Jersey is one of 11 states Wednesday that applied for a federal waiver from elements of No Child Left Behind, the federal education law. New York state is also expected to apply for the waiver by February.

USA Today Washington bureau chief Susan Page and New York Magazine national affairs editor John Heilemann discuss New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's impact on national politics.

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After months of riding a national tidal wave of media attention for his battle with organized labor and waste in government spending, Christie now has to get down to the task at hand when his team meets tomorrow with representatives of the state's public worker unions.

New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie's mantra in every national interview is that he is not running for President in 2012. But that hasn't stopped Republicans from asking, or voters from noticing. In a recent Quinnipiac University poll, respondents ranked Christie number three, just below first lady Michelle Obama and former President Bill Clinton (and one step above President Barack Obama) when asked to rate how they feel about public leaders. Christie is, in a word, a "hot" political commodity. But polls also showed Christie has issues with name recognition: 55 percent of respondents said they didn't know him well enough to make a decision.

Mike Kelly, columnist at New Jersey's The Record, runs down Chris Christie's State of the State speech in New Jersey. 

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New Jersey Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, chief sponsor of the medical cannabis legislation currently before the state Senate, discusses Governor Chris Christie's revisions to the law that would mandate stricter regulation of medical marijuana.

ARC is dead. Long live ARC in a different guise.

Tuesday's announcement that the city is seriously exploring sending the No. 7 subway line to New Jersey rippled through press conferences and urban planning groups. At a press conference to announce a comic book to help job seekers, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the crush of riders between New York and New Jersey continues to rise, and that reality demands more cross-Hudson transit capacity.

Tom Moran, political columnist for the Star-Ledger, discusses news in New Jersey relating to Governor Chris Christie, including capping public employee salaries, climate change and the ARC tunnel.

Talks between Amtrak and New Jersey Transit over an abandoned commuter train tunnel have broken down just two weeks after they began.

Hearings are set to begin tomorrow on why New Jersey failed to win hundreds of millions of dollars in federal education funds. An Assembly committee will question members of Gov. Chris Christie's administration about a clerical error that caused the state to lose the Race to the Top money -- and Education Commissioner Bret Shundler his job.

First, this week New Jersey got the bad news that it lost its bid to win $400 million in federal education aid from the Obama administration's highly competitive Race to the Top program. Then the Star-Ledger reported that the state's grant application had failed, in part, because of a clerical error made by a mid-level state staffer.

Gov. Chris Christie came to the new Giants-Jets stadium's 50-yard line to lay out the most dramatic public policy shift for the state's gambling industry and Sports Authority since both were created more than 30 years ago. After the state lost the intitial rounds of roulette on the Xanadu mega-mall here, Christie says he may have no choice but to throw more chips on the table.

Steve Kornacki notes that should he beat Republican challenger Rick Lazio in November, New York gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo is hoping to become like New Jersey's transformative Governor Chris Christie, but could wind up like New York's vanquished Governor, Eliot Spitzer.

Until the very end, Democrats swore that Corzine was safe and that their boilerplate attacks on the G.O.P. nominee—so successful between 1994 and 2008—would work as usual. It is impossible, therefore, to articulate what a body-blow Christie’s triumph was to the Trenton establishment.

This has been a major source of Christie’s legislative success. His victory shook Democrats, disabused them of their notions of invincibility, and compelled them to regard the new governor’s agenda with a seriousness they never afforded Corzine and his plans.

The ruling Democrats in Albany are just as arrogant as they were in Trenton, but Cuomo’s impending victory—no matter how massive the margin—won’t prompt any comparable soul-searching. The reason is simple: They’ve seen this story before.

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[F]rom the vantage point of most of the Albany establishment, the governor-in-waiting looks and sounds a lot more like an Eliot Spitzer than a Chris Christie.

The only point I'd add here is that unlike Spitzer, if elected Cuomo would have a much better handle on the politics of Albany, which he's employed for decades.

Dickter's interview with Blakeman got refershingly deep into the weeds of foreign policy. 

 Around the 3:30 minute mark, Blakeman says the US is no longer preventing allies from talking to rogue or unfriendly nations.

"The president of Brazil met with the President of Syria. Assad. Bashar Assad. I cannot think that if George Bush was still president, that the President of Brazil would meet with the Syrian president. I cannot imagine a scenario where that would happen."

Around the 4:10 mark, Blakeman hits Gillibrand for not bringing the White House closer into Israel’s corner:

"So, I think there’s a fundamental shift away from Israel and towards the Palestinians, by the administration. Senator Gillibrand has been absolutely silent on that, and I think that has emboldened Iran."

On the home front, Blakeman praised Chris Christie as someone "reflecting the new Republican Party." When asked about Sarah Palin, Blakeman was complimentary, but not non-committal about her 2012 chances.

“I think there’s a perception that she’s not smart. I think she’s very smart. I think she does have great communication skills, leadership skills, but there a lot of good Republicans out there who could be potential presidential candidates, and I think Sarah Palin is just one of them.”

From 10,000 feet up, it doesn't appear much happened on Primary Day in New Jersey. The drive-by media headlined it as "All House Incumbents Prevail. No Tea Party Here." Democrats in Washington ...