Quinn calls on Burris to quit  —  Gov. Pat Quinn at his press conference this morning.  (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune)  —  Gov. Patrick Quinn today called on U.S. Sen. Roland Burris to resign amid the furor of questions over his contacts with former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

WH lashes out at CNBC's Santelli  —  The White House is lashing out publicly and personally at a CNBC reporter whose attack on President Obama's anti-foreclosure plan caught fire on the Internet Thursday.  —  White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs jumped at the chance to go after the CNBC journalist …

John Gibson Did Not Compare Eric Holder To Monkey With Bright Blue Scrotum (UPDATED)  —  UPDATE: The Huffington Post has learned that the below video has been doctored.  We regret the error and apologize to Mr. Gibson.  John Gibson never compared Eric Holder to a monkey with a bright blue scrotum.

Dodd Says Short-Term Bank Takeovers May Be Necessary  —  Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) — Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said banks may have to be nationalized for “a short time” to help lenders including Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. survive the worst economic slump in 75 years.

AP Interview: Transportation secretary says taxing how much we drive may replace gasoline tax  —  WASHINGTON (AP) — Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says he wants to consider taxing motorists based on how many miles they drive rather than how much gasoline they burn …

Prince of Darkness Denies Own Existence  —  Listening to neoconservative mastermind Richard Perle at the Nixon Center yesterday, there was a sense of falling down the rabbit hole.  —  In real life, Perle was the ideological architect of the Iraq war and of the Bush doctrine of preemptive attack.

Obama Bans Gimmicks, and Deficit Will Rise  —  WASHINGTON — For his first annual budget next week, President Obama has banned four accounting gimmicks that President George W. Bush used to make deficit projections look smaller.  The price of more honest bookkeeping: A budget …

Obama's Supine Diplomacy  —  The Biden prophecy has come to pass.  Our wacky veep, momentarily inspired, predicted in October that “it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama.”  Biden probably had in mind an eve-of-the-apocalypse drama like the Cuban missile crisis.

The Obama Cabinet is a CEO black hole  —  In President Barack Obama's Cabinet, there is a Nobel Prize winner, a former mayor, and a veteran CIA agent.  Surrounding him in the White House West Wing are a former four-star general, one of the nation's most eminent economists …

Laissez-Faire Capitalism Has Failed  —  The financial crisis lays bare the weakness of the Anglo-Saxon model.  —  It is now clear that this is the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and the worst economic crisis in the last 60 years.  While we are already in a severe …

Glenn Greenwald is Hysterical  —  Not funny-hysterical, just hysterical.  I think he feels badly about writing for The American Conservative, maybe because he knows that writing for a magazine founded by Pat Buchanan and animated by Buchanan's hostility to Jews and to Israel is a self-marginalizing act …

Washington Post Stands By Climate Change Denialism  —  For those who are late to the party, recently George Will wrote a column claiming, most broadly, that in the 1970s there was a scientific consensus that the world was suffering from “global cooling” that was as firm as the current consensus about global warming.

“This is our house now:” ACORN mob begins breaking into homes  —  On Wednesday, I said prepare for lawlessness as ACORN's civil disobedience mob steps up pressure for President Obama's mortgage entitlement expansion.  —  Well, are you ready, Baltimore?  (Hat tip - Jeff Quinton) …

Sen. Specter Jeered For Voting For Stimulus Plan  —  PITTSBURGH (KDKA) ― U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter was greeted with jeers at a press conference in Cranberry Township.  —  Conservatives are fuming after Specter cast the deciding vote that led to the passage of President Barack Obama's stimulus plan.

Israel: Iran, Syria secretly continuing nuclear projects  —  “Iran and Syria are secretly working on nuclear technology in a manner which risks peace in the region and the world and while bluntly ignoring their international obligations,” a statement by the Foreign Ministry said Friday evening.

Poll: Obama rating slips, but still high  —  CNN Deputy Political Director  —  WASHINGTON (CNN) — A national poll indicates that two out of three Americans approve of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as president of the United States.  —  The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey …

A test for the Israeli lobby  —  The pro-Israel wing of Obama's supporters has generally been pretty happy with the state of the administration, from Hillary's appointment to Dennis Ross' role with Iran.  George Mitchell, by downplaying Israeli settlements and stressing Iran policy yesterday, won raves from hawkish Jewish leaders.

Iseman to POLITICO: The Times lied  —  Vicki Iseman, who sued The New York Times over a story suggesting that she had had a romantic relationship with John McCain, is now accusing the paper of lying about whether it apologized or retracted the story in the course of settlement discussions.

Dispatches: Are Media Polls Criminally Bad?  —  This post is part of Pollster.com's week-long series on Stan Greenberg's new book, Dispatches from the War Room.  —  Stan Greenberg's book is a “good read” from both a political and a polling perspective and I know fellow junkies will find it rewarding.