Porn industry seeks federal bailout  —  WASHINGTON (CNN) — Another major American industry is asking for assistance as the global financial crisis continues: Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis said Wednesday they will request that Congress allocate $5 billion …

NBC's Matthews Won't Run for Senate  —  Chris Matthews, the host of the MSNBC program “Hardball,” told his staff on Wednesday night that he would not run for the Senate in 2010 from Pennsylvania.  —  For much of the last year, Mr. Matthews had been considering entering the Senate race …

Joe the Plumber to become war correspondent  —  TOLEDO, Ohio - Joe The Plumber is putting down his wrenches and picking up a reporter's notebook.  —  The Ohio man who became a household name during the presidential campaign says he is heading to Israel as a war correspondent for the conservative Web site pjtv.com.

Obama Says He Will Seek Overhaul of Retiree Spending  —  WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama said Wednesday that overhauling Social Security and Medicare would be “a central part” of his administration's efforts to contain federal spending, signaling for the first time that he would wade …

Obama Is Reported Set to Revise Counterterrorism Efforts  —  WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama is preparing to scrap the way President Bush oversaw domestic security in the White House and name a former Central Intelligence Agency official to coordinate counterterrorism, people close to the transition said Wednesday.

Protester Calls for Jews to ‘Go Back to the Oven’ at Anti-Israel Demonstration  —  Like many other protests of Israel's campaign in Gaza, this one ended badly — police had to cool an ugly fight between supporters of Israel and Gaza, breaking up the warring sides as their screaming and chanting threatened to turn into something worse.

White House Asked Howard To Stay In Blair House To Give ‘Some Plausible Reason’ For Refusing Obama  —  In December, President-elect Obama asked the White House if he and his family could move into Blair House — the White House's guest house — a week early, so that his daughters Malia and Sasha could start school.

Why Feinstein broke with Obama on Panetta  —  (01-06) 18:17 PST — Sen. Dianne Feinstein's chilly response Tuesday to outreach from President-elect Barack Obama - after stomping on his choice of fellow Californian Leon Panetta as head of the CIA - dealt the incoming administration …

Chicago Public Schools' cappuccino bill: $67,000  —  Chicago public school bureaucrats skirted competitive bidding rules to buy 30 cappuccino/espresso machines for $67,000, with most of the machines going unused because the schools they were ordered for had not asked for them …

Rocket barrage hits northern Israel  —  At least two Katyusha rockets fired from southern Lebanon land in Western Galilee region Thursday morning, in and around town of Nahariya; two people lightly wounded in attack; school day cancelled in town.  IDF shells rocket launching sites in southern Lebanon in response

Stop Juan Cole  —  Juan Cole is decrying all the neocons he's forced to compete with in the 2008 Weblog Awards for Best Middle East or Africa Blog.  He thinks Helena Cobban — a deranged Hezbollah supporter — should have been nominated instead of someone like me.

The Fauxto That Wasn't  —  In the midst of a liveblogging session on the conflict in Gaza, the Muqata raised the alarm about a possible fauxtograph: The Muqata: Day 12 of the War, Wednesday, January 7, 2009.  —  The picture he noticed was filed by AP photographer Adel Hana in Gaza:

Fiasco at the Army War College  —  Did faculty members at the Army War College curtail their criticism of the Iraq war for fear of institutional retaliation?  —  That seems to be the bottom line in a situation I stumbled across just a few days ago.  A friend passed along a 2005 e-mail note …

Where we stand  —  We are stabilizing everything as best we can right now, and getting ourselves backups to help keep everything safe and restoreable in the short-term  —  A long term fix is also on the way.  —  It also seems like SoapBlox needs to be transformed from a proprietary model …

Palin Draws First Major Dem Challenger for 2010 Race  —  Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) has drawn her first Democratic challenger in a potential reelection bid in 2010, a hurdle the former vice presidential nominee may need to clear before pursuing national ambitions.

The Myth of Bush As “The Hero of September 11”  —  As January 20 grows larger in the window, I've been thinking more often about the Bush legacy — specifically about certain aspects of the president's record that are in danger of being completely obliterated and replaced with myths and wholesale fiction.

Senate recount: It's unlikely Coleman will win in court  —  Norm Coleman is surrounded by supporters and members of the media following his press conference on Tuesday.  —  Norm Coleman's public statement Tuesday, in officially announcing that he would contest the election result, struck the right tone.

China Losing Taste for Debt From the U.S.  —  HONG KONG — China has bought more than $1 trillion of American debt, but as the global downturn has intensified, Beijing is starting to keep more of its money at home, a move that could have painful effects for American borrowers.

PARTISAN SELF-DECEPTION.  —  Matt Yglesias notes that left-of-center commentary has been notably more pessimistic on the state of the economy than right-of-center commentary.  He offers three hypotheses (left-wing positions are psychologically correlated to pessimism, pessimism was correct …

Purple Heart Is Ruled Out for Traumatic Stress  —  The Pentagon has decided that it will not award the Purple Heart, the hallowed medal given to those wounded or killed by enemy action, to war veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder because it is not a physical wound.

TAKING CHANCE - HBO MOVIE TO AIR IN FEBRUARY  —  “Chance Phelps was wearing his Saint Christopher medal when he was killed on Good Friday.  Eight days later, I handed the medallion to his mother.  I didn't know Chance before he died.  Today, I miss him.”  - LtCol Michael R. Strobl, USMC (Ret.), “Taking Chance”