The Action Americans Need  —  By now, it's clear to everyone that we have inherited an economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the days of the Great Depression.  Millions of jobs that Americans relied on just a year ago are gone; millions more of the nest eggs families worked so hard to build have vanished.

Obama 1-on-1 with swing senators  —  Working to get the last Senate votes for his economic recovery plan, President Barack Obama reached out Wednesday to his old rival, Sen. John McCain, even as he warned Republicans against making “perfect the enemy of the essential.”

Obama losing the stimulus message war  —  At this crucial juncture in the push to pass an economic recovery package, President Obama finds himself in the most unlikely of places: He is losing the message war.  —  Despite Obama's sky high personal approval ratings, polls show support …

Sessions: GOP Insurgency “May Be Required”  —  Frustrated by a lack of bipartisan outreach from House Democratic leaders, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said House Republicans — who voted unanimously last week against the economic plan pushed …

The GOP Has a Dumb Mortgage Idea  —  It contradicts the ideals of Republicanism and good economics.  —  Few philosophers have done more good than Locke and Montesquieu, whose advocacy of divided government inspired America's Founders.  Our history, and the less happy past of nations without checks …

White House to Bypass Commerce on Census  —  The director of the Census Bureau will report directly to the White House and not the secretary of Commerce, according to a senior White House official.  —  The decision came after black and Hispanic leaders raised questions about Commerce Secretary …

Bill Gates Unleashes Swarm of Mosquitoes on Crowd  —  Microsoft founder turned philanthropist Bill Gates released a glass full of mosquitoes at an elite technology conference to make a point about the deadly disease malaria.  —  “Malaria is spread by mosquitoes,” Gates said while opening …

Volcker Chafes at Obama Panel Delay, Strains With Summers Rise  —  Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) — Paul Volcker has grown increasingly frustrated over delays in setting up the economic advisory group President Barack Obama picked the former Federal Reserve chairman to lead, people familiar with the matter said.

DEA continues pot raids Obama opposes  —  President vowed to end policy  —  Drug Enforcement Administration agents this week raided four medical marijuana shops in California, contrary to President Obama's campaign promises to stop the raids.  —  The White House said it expects those kinds …

Cooper in doghouse for remark  —  Rep. Jim Cooper is the Al Gore of financial collapse.  —  For decades, the Tennessee Democrat has warned that the country will be in dire straits if the government keeps borrowing billions from foreign creditors.  —  Those doomsday forecasts haven't always …

Citing Geithner's Tax Error, Critics Say Obama's Ethics Standards Are Flexible  —  As he insists that ethical standards should be the same for both the powerful and the people, critics say that President Obama is looking the other way when it comes to his Treasury secretary.

Time to Play Hardball  —  The irony of President Obama's Blue Tuesday is that the wall-to-wall television interviews he granted were designed not to apologize for Tom Daschle's fall from grace but to fight back against the Republicans' success in tarnishing his stimulus package.

New rules  —  “Shameful.”  That was the President's response last week to the news that Wall Street had doled out $18 billion in bonuses, even after the government had propped up many of the Street's most prominent firms.  —  Today, he and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner took action …

Sen. Klobuchar steals show at Congressional dinner  —  Sen. Amy Klobuchar's (D-Minn.) surprisingly caustic humor elicited belly laughs from much of the Washington press corps Wednesday night at the Washington Press Club Foundation's Annual Congressional Dinner.

New Jersey Plant Is Called Source of Sweet Smell  —  It wafted, seductively, over Staten Island, Brooklyn, then Manhattan, a smell that was sweet but indecipherable.  And now the mayor has revealed that the likely source was fenugreek seeds used to produce fragrances at a plant in Hudson County in New Jersey.

White House ‘hopeful’ on appointing Zinni  —  Despite Anthony Zinni's evident perception that he had the job of ambassador to Iraq proffered and then taken back, a senior White House official signaled that the retired Marine General is still a leading candidate for some administration post.

AN INSTAPUNDIT EXCLUSIVE: A report from Michael Yon.  —  It's Raining  —  By Michael Yon  —  05 February 2009  —  There had been a light, cold drizzle just before the Muslim taxi driver picked me up in Jerusalem.  It should be a 90-minute drive to Sderot, in southern Israel.

Health Benefits For Unemployed Stripped From Stimulus, HuffPost Readers Find  —  Reading even a single page of a Senate bill is often no simple task, with legislative-ese obscuring the purpose behind the language.  Reading 736 pages of the stuff is like mountain climbing in a wheelchair.

RFK Jr.: Hog farms bigger threat than Osama  —  WASHINGTON — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday said he thinks hog farmers are a greater threat to Americans than Osama bin Laden.  —  Mr. Kennedy, son of the the slain New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, is an environmental law attorney …

Panic!  —  Michael Hirsh sounds the alarm: … Theda Skocpol says the same: … I hope I'm not being blithe but I don't see it this way.  Obama still has majorities in both Houses.  The GOP surely won't filibuster the bill in the Senate.  What matters is the end-result, for which the president will ultimately be accountable.

White House Cheat Sheet: Bypassing the Media Filter  —  During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama and his team learned a very important lesson that they are seeking to put into practice in the White House: the power of the media is overrated.  —  Time and again during the campaign …

Productivity, and unit labor costs, rise  —  Non-farm business productivity rose 3.2% in the fourth quarter of 2008, much higher than the consensus estimate of 2.1%.  Meanwhile, real compensation jumped by 15.6% in the fourth quarter, driven by a 5% wage increase and a 9.2% decrease in consumer prices.