BURRIS' SON GOT STATE JOB FROM BLAGO  —  The son of embattled Sen. Roland Burris is a federal tax deadbeat who landed a $75,000-a-year state job under former Gov. Rod Blagojevich five months ago, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.  —  Blagojevich's administration hired Roland W. Burris II …

To Pay for Health Care, Obama Looks to Taxes on Affluent  —  WASHINGTON — President Obama will propose further tax increases on the affluent to help pay for his promise to make health care more accessible and affordable, calling for stricter limits on the benefits of itemized deductions taken …

President and His Inner Circle Have Earmarks in Omnibus  —  Funny how items show up in spending bills without any notice — like an earmark for a president who promised not to seek any.  —  President Obama, who took a no-earmark pledge on the campaign trail, is listed as one of dozens …

The Joe-the-Plumberization of the GOP  —  With CPAC upon us, I had wanted to write a state-of-the-movement piece, and describing what I felt had gone wrong.  But I couldn't quite put my finger on it.  It hit me like a ton of bricks when I saw this:  —  It could have been like any other of the hundreds …

GOP at risk of becoming party in the no  —  Another day, another no vote.  —  After near-unanimous Republican congressional opposition to President Barack Obama's stimulus package and a week dominated by headlines of GOP governors poised to reject stimulus funding, House Republicans followed …

DATING A BANKER ANONYMOUS...EXPOSED!  —  On January 25, the New York Times reported on the women of Dating a Banker Anonymous.  The Times reported: … On February 2, the Times appended a typical Times correction to the story: … The Times missed a tad more than the second “t” in Buffett's name.

U.S. Is Arms Bazaar for Mexican Cartels  —  PHOENIX — The Mexican agents who moved in on a safe house full of drug dealers last May were not prepared for the fire power that greeted them.  —  When the shooting was over, eight agents were dead.  Among the guns the police recovered …

Governor Jindal, Rising G.O.P. Star, Plummets After Speech  —  Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana has been a rising star in the Republican Party, but his stock took a hit as he was roundly panned for his televised response to President Obama's first speech to Congress on Tuesday night.

Christopher Hitchens and the Battle of Beirut  —  Last week Christopher Hitchens and I were attacked in Beirut.  Less than 24 hours after we landed at the international airport, a half dozen members of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party jumped us on Hamra Street when he defaced one of their signs.

ACLU sues city of Clearwater over tackle shop's fish mural  —  Herb Quintero, owner of the Complete Angler, and the ACLU's Becky Steele talk Tuesday after suing the city of Clearwater.  —  Times]  —  CLEARWATER — A fight over a fish mural has landed in federal court.

The Dead Tree Theory  —  Whenever a president gives a major address, like the one Barack Obama delivered to Congress this week, the opposition party delivers a rejoinder.  Which American citizens always ignore.  Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's speech was, therefore, a kind of triumph.

Obama's Straw Men  —  Why does he routinely ascribe to opponents views they don't espouse?  —  President Barack Obama reveres Abraham Lincoln.  But among the glaring differences between the two men is that Lincoln offered careful, rigorous, sustained arguments to advance his aims and …

Log Cabin under Democratic control?  —  Sources say Tim Gill, a prominent Dem donor, is dictating GOP group's direction  —  The amount of money that the Gill Action Fund has contributed to the Log Cabin Republicans — about one-third of its total budget in some years …

Obama's Proposes Up to $750 Billion More for Bank Aid  —  Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama's first budget request would provide as much as $750 billion in new aid to the financial industry, as well as overhaul the U.S. health-care system and launch a program to cut carbon-dioxide emissions.

Obama's Harvard Raid Echoes Kennedy's Draft of Intellectuals  —  Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) — Jody Freeman, a Harvard law professor, helped press the Bush administration in a lawsuit to regulate greenhouse gases.  Now, she is counseling President Barack Obama on how best to combat global warming.

House Kills Effort to Investigate Lobbyist-Lawmaker Ties  —  The proposal would have forced the House Ethics Committee to launch a probe into ties between the source and timing of campaign contributions by lobbyists and subsequent legislator requests for special projects or earmarks.  —  FOXNews.com

A Radical Presidency  —  When Barack Obama delivered his 44-minute acceptance speech in August among the majestic columns of Denver, it was apparent his would be an expansive presidency.  Some wondered whether his solutions for a very long list of problems was too ambitious.

Prudes at Dinner, Gluttons in Bed  —  Put down that cheeseburger and listen up: If food has become what sex was a generation ago — the intimidatingly intelligent Mary Eberstadt says it has — then a cheeseburger is akin to adultery, or worse.  As eating has become highly charged with moral judgments …

Bloggers and Unions Join Forces to Push Democrats  —  WASHINGTON — A group of liberal bloggers said it is teaming up with organized labor and MoveOn to form a political action committee that will seek to push the Democratic Party farther to the left.  —  Soliciting donations from their readers …

The Negro Family: The Case For National Action  —  Office of Policy Planning and Research  —  Two hundred years ago, in 1765, nine assembled colonies first joined together to demand freedom from arbitrary power.  —  For the first century we struggled to hold together the first continental union of democracy in the history of man.

Drone Attacks Inside Pakistan Will Continue, CIA Chief Says  —  Panetta Calls Strikes ‘Successful’ at Disrupting Insurgents  —  CIA Director Leon Panetta said yesterday that U.S. aerial attacks against al-Qaeda and other extremist strongholds inside Pakistan would continue, despite concerns about a popular Pakistani backlash.

The 2% Illusion  —  Take everything they earn, and it still won't be enough.  —  President Obama has laid out the most ambitious and expensive domestic agenda since LBJ, and now all he has to do is figure out how to pay for it.  On Tuesday, he left the impression that we need merely end …