Steele to CPAC: The Republican party is just fine  —  WASHINGTON (CNN) - Capping off a day of conservative soul-searching, strategizing and navel-gazing at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele announced Thursday …

Pelosi butts heads with Obama  —  Nancy Pelosi repeatedly stood to applaud Barack Obama when he addressed a joint session of Congress Tuesday night.  But in the days since, the speaker of the House has been standing up for herself —distancing herself from the president on Iraq …

Climate of Change  —  Elections have consequences.  President Obama's new budget represents a huge break, not just with the policies of the past eight years, but with policy trends over the past 30 years.  If he can get anything like the plan he announced on Thursday through Congress, he will set America on a fundamentally new course.

U.S. Agrees to Raise Its Stake in Citigroup  —  In its most daring bid yet to stabilize Citigroup, one of the nation's largest and most troubled financial institutions, the Treasury Department announced on Friday that it would vastly increase its ownership of the struggling company.

Obama Plans to End Combat Mission in Iraq by August 2010  —  WASHINGTON — President Obama heads to one of the nation's most storied military bases Friday morning to unveil plans to pull most troops out of Iraq by August 2010 and he has support from an unlikely quarter — Senator John McCain …

Conservatives Confident Their Day Is Coming  —  Tucker Carlson closed out the first day of the Conservative Political Action Conference to a chorus of boos.  His crime: informing a crowd of youngish, frustrated conservatives that if they wanted to succeed, they had to copy The New York Times.

Insight: Time to expose those CDOs  —  Just how much should a debt vehicle backed by subprime mortgage bonds be worth these days?  Two years ago, most banks and insurance companies assumed the answer was close to 100 per cent of face value - or more.  —  Since then, however, that “price” …

Steep GDP Revision Puts Economic Loss at 6.2%  —  The U.S. economy contracted more sharply than initially estimated in the fourth quarter, government data showed on Friday, as exports plunged and consumers cut spending by the most in over 28 years amid a severe recession.

59% Still Believe Government Is the Problem  —  In early October, as the meltdown of the financial industry gained momentum following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, a Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 59% of U.S. voters agreed with Ronald Reagan that …

Jewish Leaders Blast Clinton Over Israel Criticism  —  Zuckerman, Lawmakers, Local Jews Say Secretary Of State Not The Hillary Clinton They Used To Know  —  Hillary Pressuring Israel To Speed Up Aid To Gaza  —  NEW YORK (CBS) ― In a swift about face from her views as New York's senator …

More entertaining Sen. Burris news, this time on son Burris II  —  Not an all-around awful day for Democratic Sen. Roland Burris of Illinois.  —  Just terrible this time.  —  As you may have heard, the legally-embattled junior Illinois senator replacement for Barack Obama …

San Francisco welcomes William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn  —  Former Weather Underground leaders William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn made an appearance at San Francisco's Modern Times Bookstore on February 21 to promote their new book Race Course Against White Supremacy.

Firms defraud government but get new US contracts  —  Featured Topics: - Barack Obama - Presidential Transition  —  WASHINGTON - Companies that defrauded the United States and jeopardized American lives received new government work despite rulings designed to stop them from receiving federal contracts, government investigators report.

Arsonists Torch Berlin Porsches, BMWs on Economic Woe  —  Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) — When Berlin resident Simone Klostermann returned from vacation and couldn't find her Mercedes SLK, she thought it had been towed.  Police told her the 35,000- euro ($45,000) car had been torched.

Ambitious Blueprint a Big Risk The President Is Willing to Take  —  President Obama's first budget — with its eye-popping $1.75 trillion deficit, a health-care fund of more than $600 billion, a $150 billion energy package and proposals to tax wealthy Americans even beyond what he talked …