Top Items:
Jackie Calmes / New York Times:
Democrats Resisting Obama on Social Security — WASHINGTON — President Obama is eager to seek a bipartisan solution to ensure the long-term solvency of Social Security, people who have spoken with him say, but he is running into opposition from his party's left and from Democratic Congressional leaders …
Discussion:
The Daily Dish, Boston Globe, CBS News, MSNBC, PoliGazette, Time, Political Machine, AmSpecBlog, The Note, Open Left, cab drollery and Eschaton
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Robert Kuttner / Washington Post:
The Deficit Hawks' Attack on Our Entitlements — With the enactment of a large economic stimulus package, fiscal conservatives are using the temporary deficit increase to attack a perennial target — Social Security and Medicare. The private-equity investor Peter G. Peterson …
Discussion:
Firedoglake, Paul Krugman, The Opinionator, Christy Hardin Smith, The Daily Dish, Salon, The Plum Line and Blog entry
Robert Barnes / Washington Post:
Legal Experts Propose Limiting Justices' Powers, Terms — If we had it to do all over again, would we appoint Supreme Court justices for life? Allow the chief justice to keep the job forever? Let the court have the final word on which cases it hears and those it declines?
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Steve Benen / Washington Monthly:
REMOVING ALL DOUBT.... Five years ago, Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ken.) won re-election despite odd and erratic personal behavior. Now, in advance of another re-election fight, Bunning is acting strangely again. — Last month, Bunning decided not to show up for work for a while, and refused to say publicly where he was.
Lydia Saad / Gallup:
Assessing Obama's Job Approval at the One-Month Mark — Receives solid approval, but not extraordinary in historical terms — USA - Government and Politics - Presidential Job Approval - The Presidency - Americas - Northern America — PRINCETON, NJ — President Barack Obama remains …
Paul Krugman / New York Times:
Banking on the Brink — Comrade Greenspan wants us to seize the economy's commanding heights. — O.K., not exactly. What Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman — and a staunch defender of free markets — actually said was, “It may be necessary to temporarily nationalize …
Jeanne Cummings / The Politico:
Forget change: GOP eyes retro strategy — Republicans are hatching a political comeback by dusting off a strategic playbook written nearly two decades ago. — Its themes: Unite against Democrats' economic policy, block and counter health care reform and tar them with spending scandals.
Discussion:
Washington Monthly, The Moderate Voice, The Washington Independent, The Caucus and Daily Kos
Manu Raju / The Politico:
How Burris blew it — CHICAGO — The crisis now threatening Sen. Roland Burris' political career started with revelations about his entanglements with disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. — But it was the way the situation was handled by Burris and his advisers …
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David Shepardson / Detroit News:
Auto team drives imports — Fed task force has few new U.S. cars — WASHINGTON — The vehicles owned by the Obama administration's auto team could reflect one reason why Detroit's Big Three automakers are in trouble: The list includes few new American cars.
Anne Bayefsky / Forbes:
The Obama Administration Sacrifices Israel — The cover-up on Durban II's anti-Semitic agenda. — The Obama administration's decision to join the planning of the U.N.'s Durban II “anti-racism” conference has just taken a new twist: cover-up. On Friday, State Department officials …
Rick Santelli / CNBC:
Santelli's Manifesto: Why He Called for a ‘Tea Party’ — CNBC's Rick Santelli called for a “Chicago Tea Party” Thursday, leading the charge for calls to revolt against the Obama Administration's mortgage bailout plan. — He touched a nerve, not only on the trading floor that day …
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Phil Rosenthal / Chicago Tribune:
Rant raises profile of CNBC on-air personality Rick Santelli
Rant raises profile of CNBC on-air personality Rick Santelli
Discussion:
TalkLeft
Myglesias / Matthew Yglesias:
You, Me, and David Gregory — I think everyone understands the human phenomenon whereby we mistaken deem our own personal experiences to be more typical than they are. People who attended selective colleges tend to talk as if they don't realize that the majority of the minority of Americans …
Discussion:
Outside The Beltway
Mark Blumenthal / Pollster.com:
Dispatches: Greenberg vs. Penn — Of the many stories in Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg's new book, Dispatches from the War Room, the most newsworthy may be his slashing condemnation of Mark Penn, the pollster that displaced him within the inner circles of both President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Sam Dillon / New York Times:
Rename Law? No Wisecrack Is Left Behind — WASHINGTON — Two years ago, an effort to fix No Child Left Behind, the main federal law on public schools, provoked a grueling slugfest in Congress, leading Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, to say the law had become “the most negative brand in America.”
Robert J. Samuelson / Washington Post:
Obama's Stunted Stimulus — Judged by his own standards, President Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus program is deeply disappointing. For weeks, Obama has described the economy in grim terms. “This is not your ordinary run-of-the-mill recession,” he said at his Feb. 9 news conference.
Discussion:
Commentary
Jeffrey Toobin / New Yorker:
VOTER, BEWARE — The Voting Rights Act, which passed in 1965, stands as one of the great monuments to civil rights in American history. The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, purported to give Americans the right to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude …
Discussion:
Betsy's Page
Rajiv Chandrasekaran / Washington Post:
A ‘Ticking Time Bomb’ Goes Off — When Abdallah Al-Ajmi Returned to Kuwait After Nearly Four Years at Guantanamo, His Family Tried to Get Him to Move On. But He Didn't Want to Let Go. — KUWAIT CITY — After arriving here from Guantanamo Bay in November 2005, Abdallah Saleh al-Ajmi …
Discussion:
The BLT
The Moderate Voice:
Let's Grow Up And Raise Taxes (Guest Voice) — LET'S GROW UP AND RAISE TAXES — by Marc Pascal — The first of several stimulus packages has just passed but it is just the beginning of our efforts to address our immediate and long-term economic problems.
Fox News:
Obama Taps Biden to Oversee Stimulus Package Implementation — With Vice President Joe Biden at the helm, $15 billion from the recovery package will be freed up Wednesday for state Medicaid programs, President Obama says. — FOXNews.com — President Obama has turned to his own vice president …
Ta-Nehisi Coates:
Alan Keyes—Goon — I spent some of my earliest days, as a reporter, profiling writers. It was what I wanted to be, and thus what I was most interested in. One of the more shocking revelations, for me, was the discovery that people who were brilliant on the page, could sound …
Discussion:
Brian Beutler
Andrew Breitbart / Washington Times:
‘And now for something completely different, please’ — ANALYSIS/OPINION: — As CPAC begins in the nation's capital later this week, the conservative movement has much to contemplate as it attempts to reestablish itself as a dominant force in American political life.
New York Times:
U.S. Unit Secretly in Pakistan Lends Ally Support — BARA, Pakistan — More than 70 United States military advisers and technical specialists are secretly working in Pakistan to help its armed forces battle Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the country's lawless tribal areas, American military officials said.
Discussion:
JustOneMinute, Jihad Watch, Real Clear Politics, The Washington Independent, ATTACKERMAN and Sister Toldjah
Lisa Lerer / The Politico:
Reid: Don't call it nationalization — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he supports efforts of the federal government to dramatically expand its stake in Citigroup, but wants people to back off from the dramatic rhetoric. — “It's not nationalization, it's protecting the taxpayers' interests …
Discussion:
Say Anything
Michelle Malkin:
Hey, lady, your $800,000 house is NOT my problem — Repeat after me: Property value-preservation is not a civil right. — Craig Meister at the Examiner.com points me to this typical CNN sob story clip of a bus driver named Minta Garcia who is demanding that President Obama halt all foreclosures.
Pat Doyle / Minneapolis Star Tribune:
Rulings have diminished Coleman's recount chances — Norm Coleman's chance of winning a recount appear to be diminishing, but he could be laying the groundwork for an appeal. — The Senate election trial is a month old, enough time to ask: Does Norm Coleman have a chance of winning?
Discussion:
TIME.com